


To The Victor The Spoils

by decepticontrashparty



Series: Legacy of the Arena [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (Chapter Eleven), (Chapter Fourteen), Dissociation, Double Penetration in One Hole, Dystopia, Electrocution, Flashbacks, Forced Orgasm, Gang Rape, Gangbang, Genital Mutilation, Gladiator Culture, Guro, Humiliation, M/M, Medical Torture, Not Safe Not Sane Not Consensual, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Painful Sex, Psychological Trauma, Public Sex, Rape, Spark Sexual Interfacing, Sparkrape, Torture, Unhelpful Cultural Attitudes to Sex, mentioned briefly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-07-10 18:06:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 52,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19909963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decepticontrashparty/pseuds/decepticontrashparty
Summary: The arena was a barbaric place, but not all matches ended in death. Sometimes gladiators were worth far more alive - but victory had to be demonstrated in other ways.Overlord reminds Megatron of that fact.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Manufactured for Use](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809161) by [Sauntervaguelydown (DesdemonaKaylose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/Sauntervaguelydown). 



Overlord threw Tarn aside in a heap of barely moving, still groaning parts. Megatron watched him stalk closer from his seat at the base of the monument that bore his name, here in the field of blue flowers that marked the uncountable numbers who had died at his command. When Overlord had arrived on the scene and tackled Tarn with the explosive force of two asteroids colliding, the plasma shot meant for Megatron’s spark had burned through his left knee instead, smelting the joint. He could not walk, and he refused to crawl. There was little to gain by escaping now in any case. Overlord wanted him dead just as much as Tarn did, and it was possible that he would leave Rodimus, Ultra Magnus and the others alone if he got what he wanted. 

Megatron had come here to talk to Tarn, but he had been willing and expecting to die if words failed. Convincing Tarn to back down had been a possibility if a remote one, but the same could not be said of Overlord. 

Overlord crouched down in front of him, smirking as he so often did. His plating was slick with energon, some Tarn’s and some his own. He had a few injuries but nothing that would really affect him. His frame and protoform, coated with ununtrium, were essentially indestructible. 

“Look at you,” Overlord murmured, optics dragging up and down Megatron’s injured frame. “Is this really what you’ve come to?”

“Am I no longer the prize you wanted?” Megatron replied. He felt old and very weary. Tarn was the mech he was because Megatron had shaped him into that, into loyalty to the cause, into worship, into cruelty. Overlord… Overlord had always been a monster, but Megatron was the one who had tolerated him, allowed him his obsession so long as it was useful, and turned him into a superweapon. To look at them was to look at his mistakes come home to roost. 

Overlord put a servo around Megatron’s melted knee and squeezed. The joint deformed even more in a shock of pain. Megatron did not give Overlord the satisfaction of showing it. “You could still fight me, even injured,” he said. “The Megatron I know would have done his best to put me in my place.” The way he said it was almost loving, a mockery of that emotion. The mixture of sadism tinged with submission. “Are you really going to sit there and let me rip the spark slowly out of your chest?”

“Even if I had not made a vow, I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” Megatron replied. He was fully prepared for there to be pain, and a lot of it. After so many millennia, Overlord wouldn’t make this quick, but Megatron knew it would anger him if his one true desire was never sated - the desire to defeat Megatron in single combat, in a fair fight. 

He wanted the arena. Megatron refused to give it to him. The arena had been barbaric even amongst all the other barbarisms of the golden age of cybertron. 

Anger passed fleeting over Overlord’s faceplates, but he got a handle on himself quickly. “Let’s see how long that vow of yours lasts,” he sneered, and punched Megatron across the jaw. 

The blows and kicks raining down on Megatron’s frame sent his processor into overdrive, tactical subroutines taking priority and grabbing for every scrap of detail to analyse and find a weak point, an opening… but that was the reaction of the warlord, not the mech he had become. Ruthlessly he shunted the programs aside, terminating every prompt for action it sent flashing across his neural net. He would not let Overlord, Overlord of all mechs, make him break his vow of nonviolence. A mech was nothing but his beliefs and his actions, and Megatron would rather die. 

Would almost certainly die. 

Overlord’s fingers dug into his chestplate hard enough to dent the metal. He lifted Megatron up and slammed him into the ground over and over, leaving a trench that became a crater in the rich loam. Mud - a mixture of soil and spilt energon - splattered over them both. 

“Fight back!” Overlord urged him, pulling them face to face. His optics were burning with frustration. Megatron only smiled - although perhaps it would have been better not to react at all. Overlord dropped him abruptly. His expression turned calculating. 

“You thought I wouldn’t notice,” he said. “You’ve changed the rules of the game.” Some confidence seemed to have returned to him, for that familiar smirk was back. “You’ve always understood me too well. I don’t want to merely defeat you physically if your spark remains unbowed and unbroken. That’s not enough. That’s not a victory - you’ve still won.”

“So what do you intend to do about that?” Megatron asked, scowling. He pushed himself up slightly, getting his arms beneath him, gauging how badly Overlord had injured him. He could still move, if he had to. Not enough to escape, he was sure, but he did not like this new, assessing look that Overlord was giving him. 

Overlord bared his dentae. “Oh, only what I intended to do anyway. This isn’t how I imagined it - I pictured you already broken - but perhaps this is even better.”

“What are you blabbering about,” Megatron snarled, irritated. These vague threats annoyed him, rather than making him more afraid as they were designed to. 

Instead of answering, Overlord reached down and threw him onto his front - startled, Megatron caught himself on his servos, his broken knee going out from under him as pain flared up the struts in that thigh. Overlord grappled him, pressing chestplates to backstrut, his vents hot against Megatron’s plating. His lips were right beside Megatron’s audial.

“Do you remember the arena?” Overlord whispered. “Of course you do. All those matches, thousands and thousands over the vorns for us both. How many did we have against each other, you and I?”

He seemed to genuinely want Megatron to answer. “Eight,” he replied. Wide-spaced apart in time, to prevent the thrill of watching two great city-champions pitted against each other from waning. Always a special event, an occasion. Always the thrill in the run-up of ‘will this be the time? Will one of them finally kill the other?’ As though the mechs who organised these fights would ever allow that. He and Overlord were simply too profitable. Victory then had not been marked by death, but by… 

“Is that what this is about?” he demanded. His processor whirled, slotting together information in new ways. “Has that always been what it’s been about?”

Overlord hummed. Although one servo still kept Megatron pinned tightly to him, the other was wandering, pressing against transformation seams, dipping under plating to toy with delicate cables. “Do you mean, have I been trying to get revenge all this time? Oh, yes and no. Being raped eight times in front of screaming crowds was certainly memorable…”

Anger crackled through Megatron’s circuitry. It wasn’t as though he had  _ wanted _ to do it, no more than he had taken any more pleasure in ending lives than the simple pleasure of survival. “It was rape for everyone involved,” he said. 

“Was it?” Overlord murmured, tone still soft and gentle. “You seemed to enjoy it. I certainly recall having to wash your transfluid out of me each time.” His servo tapped idly against Megatron’s modesty panel. Not yet doing anything, but a promise. “And  _ I  _ certainly enjoyed it well enough when I was the victor - they did  _ love _ their dominance matches back home in Stanix.” He laughed, a long, rolling chuckle. “I’m many things, but not a hypocrite.”

“Overloading is not consent,” Megatron said. He had told himself that over and over again, the only thing that let him recharge at night. Overlord wasn’t the only mech he had been forced to frag rather than kill at the end of a match. It had never been the other way around. Megatron had never been defeated in the arena - but he could have allowed defeat. The one chink in his mental defence. Given a choice between being the rapist or being raped, he had never chosen the latter. 

There had been plenty of excuses. Loss of standings, loss of confidence. His reputation as a gladiator was built on being undefeated. Still. Excuses. ‘Let no mech shrink back from the reality of their actions.’ His own words, from Towards Peace. 

“It has never been about getting fragged,” Overlord told him. “Not just that. You stopped doing that after the arena, when you started the Decepticons. But you never stopped defeating me. Humiliating me. I could never beat you no matter how hard I tried.” The grip of his servo against Megatron’s throat, against his panel, turned harsh and painful. “I  _ want _ to  _ break _ you.”

“Raping me isn’t going to do that.” At least, Megatron did not think it would. He had been one of the lucky ones in his low-caste life to have avoided that fate thus far, and that was partly because he had made himself too strong to be assailed. But the knowledge of it as a possibility had always been with him since the mines and hearing it happen to others just like him. He would not allow it to mean anything more to him than just another physical trauma. He would not let it touch his mind. 

“Not the first time,” Overlord purred. “It so rarely does the first time. But I’ve changed my mind - I’m not going to kill you today. That would simply be such a waste. I had so long on Garrus 9 to perfect my techniques, and Megatron, the things I’m going to do to you…”

In the same moment he hooked his fingers under the edge of Megatron’s panel and pulled it off with a powerful jerk. It was a brief pain, nothing compared to many other pains Megatron had experienced in the past, but pinned under Overlord’s heavy frame with the air suddenly caressing his bared valve and spike-housing he felt suddenly… vulnerable. 

Overlord straightened up, keeping one servo planted in the centre of Megatron’s backstrut to stop him moving. “Pretty,” he said, parting the lips of Megatron’s valve. “Has anyone else seen this, I wonder? I know you took other Decepticons to berth sometimes, but I only recall hearing the praises for your spike.” Fingers slipped in and brushed up against mild resistance. Overlord’s engine rumbled, a deeply lustful sound. “Still sealed? Even better.”

The last time Megatron had used his valve had been millions of years and several frames ago. As leader of the Decepticons he had to maintain his authority, and too many of his followers had their beliefs about interfacing roles tainted by those Pit-cursed gladiatorial games. New frames came with new seals, and this one was very new. He would normally have broken it self-servicing with a false spike, but he would be damned if he let anyone on the  _ Lost Light _ get wind he had brought such a thing on board. 

“The crowds came to see mechs in pain,” Overlord said. A loud click behind him meant he had slid his own panel back. “Personally I like to make mechs wet for me before I rape them so I can see the self-loathing in their optics, but tradition is tradition.”

Megatron felt the head of Overlord’s spike at the lips of his valve. Slowly Overlord pushed his way in, forcing dry mesh and tight callipers to part for him. Pain stabbed deep inside Megatron’s array, and he felt his seal give way against the inexorable pressure. 

“How does it feel?” Overlord asked him. “Being taken for the first time?”

The slow agony subsided into a strut-deep ache that made his fuel-tank churn with nausea once Overlord was fully inside him. The difference between their frames was not too great, but Overlord was still bigger than him and his spike was fully proportional. It would have been difficult to take it easily even if he had been willing and eager. 

“I’ve imagined this so many times,” Overloard said, groaning with pleasure. He moved in an undulation of his hips, small strokes that still burned. Megatron remembered the arena, remembered having to take mechs dry. It hadn’t been comfortable for either party at first, not until mesh inevitably tore from the friction and let energon slick the way. “Your valve, tight and hot around my spike. I’ve imagined you begging for me, fighting me, moaning my name…” 

Megatron said nothing. He refused to make a sound. He refused to let what was happening to his frame affect him. 

“I remember using mechs like toys in the arena,” Overlord said. His servo left Megatron’s back and both of them went to his hips instead, digits pushing underneath plating and hooking in. It was a punishing grip. “I fucked them like they were spike-sheathes - like that little mech from the  _ Lost Light _ . The one with the camera, what was his name? Rewind?” He let his vents open wide to shunt moist heat down, blowing sticky and unpleasant over Megatron’s plating. “He didn’t come up any higher than my knee - his frame cracked with the pressure when I forced my spike inside him. He died while I fragged him but his frame stayed warm long enough to be worth servicing myself with his corpse.” 

Megatron tightened his jaw. He knew what Overlord was doing, trying to get a rise out of him by talking about the monstrous things he had done. He wasn’t going to let it work. 

“You’re too big to fuck like that, more’s the pity,” Overlord said. He was still keeping a slow pace, but now with each stroke he pulled all the way out and slammed back in to the hilt, rubbing paint transfers into Megatron’s aft. It was easier to focus on the pain than on Overlord’s words. His mesh had torn now, as he’d known it would. He’d thought it might hurt less with some lubrication, but the tear itself was stinging agony. “Maybe next time I’ll have some toys to stuff up here with me. Or perhaps I’ll wake Tarn up and he can have you as well. It might get the rod out of his aft.”

Would Overlord ever get tired of the sound of his own voice? Unlikely. He seemed to be getting off on what he was saying. 

Overlord bent down over him, pressing into his back again. He tore Megatron’s plating as he pulled his servos away from his hips, just one more spark of pain amongst many. One servo came to grip Megatron’s throat, the other stabilised them against the ground. The position changed the angle of the spike in his valve and Megatron grunted before he could stop himself. 

Overlord said nothing, but Megatron could almost feel his smile. He threw himself into his thrusts with wild abandon, fans roaring, pounding into Megatron’s valve like a mechanimal. Charge was crackling along his lines, easily felt through his plating as close as they were. Megatron shuttered his optics and tried to think of something, anything other than the spike filling his valve. Now that Overlord had stopped talking there was nothing to focus on other than the sensations, metal clanging against metal, the heat of another frame on top of his own, holding him down. There had been a moment he could have fought, when Overlord had only been pinning him by the hips. He could have… done something. He knew how to fight Overlord even as a superweapon, but… 

His vow. His vow. He tried to focus on that, but everything in him was crying out now that  _ he was not meant for this _ . He was Megatron! Leader of an Empire, leader of the Decepticons! He imposed his will upon others - he allowed no-one to do anything to him without his permission! This was… 

Humiliating? That was the old order talking, the corruption of Cybertron-that-was. The strictures of the ring, not some truth inherent to sparks and processors and frames. Overlord was the one who was dishonouring himself by stooping to this level. 

Why couldn’t he make himself believe that? He had thought he believed that. Had thought this wouldn’t feel like the humiliation Overlord intended it to be. 

“Do you hear the crowds cheering in your mind?” Overlord said, whispering into his audial. “They would have screamed like nothing else to see the great champion brought low, to see you raped and ruined. There might not be any crowds here, but I’ll find some. I’ll take you like this and broadcast it across the Net, so Autobots and Decepticons alike can see how far you’ve fallen. How little of you remains. Passive and weak and pathetic.”

His words were broken up by panting crackles of static, systems full and on the brink of overflowing with charge. The thrusting of his hips was fast and starting to grow uncoordinated as he neared overload. There was a slight tremor running through Megatron’s frame now, something he tried and failed to suppress. He couldn’t help thinking about the arena and all the bots who had been on this side of the equation, the ones who had lost against him. About Overlord, about the eight times Megatron had raped him and not even thought about it other than as that thing that sometimes happened, that he was forced to do. 

It felt worse on this side of it. He thought it would all be equally terrible but… this felt worse. 

Had Overlord felt like this, held down in front of the crowds? Did he tell himself it wasn’t the root for his hate for Megatron because to think otherwise would be to admit the power of it, the power Megatron had held over him? 

With a long, low groan, Overlord spilled inside him. 

He worked himself through his overload, transfluid sitting wet and unpleasant inside Megatron’s valve. Then he stilled there, fans rattling slightly as they spun off heat and began to cool down. 

His spike was still inside, stretching him, fat and hot. Megatron wanted it  _ out _ . 

“Are you done?” he said, and was caught off-guard by the way his voice hitched half-way through. 

“For now,” Overlord purred. “But in the greater scheme of things, I’m only getting started." 


	2. First of Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overlord. Megatron. The arena. The first of eight matches, and the first of eight defeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I am writing more set in this AU.

Overlord had entered the arena expecting to win, because he always won. He was larger, stronger, faster and more vicious than any gladiator Stanix had to throw at him and he doubted the gladiators of Tarn would be any different. This ‘Megatron of Tarn’ might be good enough to toss around his local opponents, to think himself worthy of the title of undefeated, but he had never faced a mech like Overlord before. 

This was a dominance match, not a death match, something Overlord was happy enough about. Victory was always delightful, whether it came at the point of a blade or the tip of a spike, and he was going to enjoy forcing his spike into Megatron’s tight valve.

Megatron proved to be crafty though. He fought well, and more importantly he fought smart. Overlord found himself actually having to _try_ , but that was only getting him more revved up, eager with anticipation, lost in the thrill of battle. They pounded each other’s plating with fists and warhammers and maces, slashed deep rents into metal with swords, switching weapons with speed and ease as they danced across the arena. Both were leaking energon in a dozen places from minor injuries before long, signals of pain and damage lost under the wash of battle-coding. Overlord slammed forwards a strike with an axe that should have cut deeply into Megatron’s shoulder joint if it didn’t remove the arm entirely and reset his optics automatically when Megatron simply… wasn’t there. 

There was a blur of motion, and Overlord’s legs went out from underneath him, cables severed at the hip. Megatron was a dark mass looming over him and then agony lanced through Overlord’s midriff. He looked down, his processor trying to keep up. There was a greatsword pinning him to the floor of the arena, stabbed down through a crack in his abdominal plating where Megatron had landed several blows over the course of the match. 

_Weakening my armour_ , Overlord realised. This was no lucky strike. It had been planned. 

He fastened both servos around the blade of the sword, heedless that he was slicing himself open in doing so, and tugged, throwing his weight up against the weapon as well. It shifted slightly, cutting through more internal components, but he could not pull it free. It was buried down through the gravel that coated the arena floor and into the steel below. He lacked the leverage to work it loose. If he tried to pull off of it, he would cut himself almost in half in doing so. 

Just out of arm's reach Megatron stood, cycling air through his intake and out through his vents hot enough to shimmer the air. Metal clicked as he cooled down. Overlord glared at him, baring his dentae. If Megatron thought this was victory, he was wrong. Overlord had not yielded yet. 

The crowd had roared when he hit the ground and was roaring still, an exaltation of chanting and anticipation. Megatron could not afford to hesitate for too long lest he look weak, hesitant. He cautiously approached. Overlord waited for the right moment and then sprang, jackknifing his frame up the length of the greatsword enough to lash out with both legs and catch Megatron’s arm in his grip. He tightened his thighs intending to snap the central strut and leave the limb immobile, but the slashed cables in his hip were not properly responding. 

A small knife appeared in Megatron’s servo. He must have been keeping it in subspace. He stabbed down into Overlord’s knee and twisted, cutting yet more cables, grinding gearing within the joint, and immobilising it with a horrid scream of metal. The leg dropped, nothing now but dead weight. 

Overlord met Megatron’s optics. He expected to see pleasure there, lust, victory, the glitter of sadism, some hint of acknowledgement that Megatron had won, had actually _bested him_ , impossible although it was to believe even now as he was living it. There was nothing. No emotion at all. Megatron simply knelt down and forced himself between Overlord’s thighs, lifting the paralysed leg out of the way. 

Camera drones moved in with rotors buzzing, like Insecticons drawn to the energon of a dying mech. 

Overlord realised, as digits touched his panel, that this was actually happening. 

He had _lost_ . For the first time in his entire career, he had _lost_. 

Not in a death match. At least defeat did not mean this was the end. Just… he did not understand where he had gone wrong. 

His panel slid open beneath those questing fingers. He had not consciously sent it the command to do that. His fuel pump was still hammering, pumping floods of energon through his frame. Sub-routines designed for violence were still very much online. 

Megatron thrust into his valve without warning or preparation, a sudden stab of fullness inside him which felt utterly alien. Something tore beneath the pressure - his seal, Overlord realised. His processor was blank, full of static and white noise. His optics were fixed on Megatron’s faceplates and his utter lack of expression. He tried to push up against the greatsword pinning him, to extend the claws inside the tips of his digits and tear into Megatron’s plating but he couldn’t reach. He fell back - he could not stop this. He was _powerless_ to stop this. 

The roar of white noise was not all inside his mind. It was the roar of the crowd as well, ectatic and wild. Precise words were lost in the tumult leaving only a wall of sound. 

More than a thousand pairs of optics were watching this. Overlord’s spark was burning with humiliation. Count those watching the fight from their homes, streamed onto vid devices, and the number who had seen him _lose_ could be in the tens of thousands and higher. They were seeing him helpless, pathetic, dominated. Unable to stop this. Unable to protect himself. 

Megatron should be enjoying this. It ought to have been _him_ pinned here, being taken, after all. Instead there was a glaze across his optics, lenses focused on nothing. As though this was nothing to him. As though _Overlord_ was nothing to him. Just another day in the arena. 

_Look at me!_ Overlord wanted to shout. _I am the_ champion _of_ Stanix! _Don’t you even appreciate what you’ve done here? Don’t you understand how monumental it is to defeat me?_

He refused to speak. He refused to _beg_ for Megatron to notice him. 

The burn in his array was nothing compared to how his spark burned and twisted in his chest. At how the gaze of the crowd held him down, pinned far more than the sword through his abdomen. All the victories he had given them, all of the shows, all of his dominance of other mechs for their pleasure - and his own, he would not claim otherwise - and they cheered just as eagerly for his defeat and rape as for any other gladiators’. 

He had known this, known the crowd was mercurial and uncaring and he was not a person to them, but he had never thought he would actually have to face that for himself. 

Overlord had never before felt like this in his functioning. It was as though the crowd was a physical thing around him, pressing down on him. His plating was burning, a very real heat that he fought to dissipate. 

Megatron’s servos pressed into his hips, pistoning into him with merciless speed. He was quiet, none of the taunts or theatrical moans of pleasure that Overlord would have made to stoke his charge and that of the crowd. The only noise he made was a soft grunt when he overloaded, charge crackling over his plating, transfluid spurting with a flush of heat deep into Overlord’s valve. Even then there was nothing, as though he had been self-servicing at night in his berth rather than fragging another mech into the ground. 

Megatron pulled out, sitting back on his heels, spike starting to retract but still shining wet with fluids. He reached forward and spread Overlord’s valve open for the waiting camera drones. There were flashes as the drones took still-pics, lighting him up to improve the exposure and show off the pearlescent colouring of transfluid. 

Then Megatron stood up, put a pede onto Overlord’s chest to steady him as he wrenched the greatsword free, and strode out of the arena. 

Overlord slid his panel closed and lay there for a moment, his frame trembling. He still didn’t understand how this had happened. Where he had gone wrong. How had Megatron beaten him? Every way he had played the fight out in his tactical analysis programs had shown him winning, and yet Megatron had beaten him anyway. 

This wasn’t supposed to _happen_. 

After a breem he stood up. His damaged leg wouldn’t bear his full weight, but he could limp very slowly away. It felt like running. He collapsed again against the wall as soon as he was inside. His frame was aching with something outside of the pain of his injuries. He shuttered his optics and triggered a diagnostic. 

Oh. He was charged up. _Still_ charged up, he supposed - his frame had been expecting victory and all that came with it. Instead… and there must not have been time for the charge to naturally dissipate. It _would_ go away on its own, but… 

He didn’t think about what he was doing. Just popped his spike, took himself in hand and… kept his processor utterly blank.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron's captivity is only just beginning.

Overlord pulled out of Megatron’s valve, a slow drag of his spike through his own transfluid. Megatron instinctively tried to slam his modesty panel shut but of course it was gone, and all he got was the ping of error messages. There was a slow trickle of fluid making its way down over his spike-housing and tracking along his thigh. His frame trembled slightly - he tried to stop the motion but could not. His forearms were planted on the muddy soil and he couldn’t seem to move  _ them _ either. He panted exhaust and tried to think, but his processor was sluggish. Chains of code looping nowhere. 

“What a nice picture you make,” Overlord said. He shifted his weight backwards, the heat of him moving away. Two digits pressed into the wetness of Megatron’s valve, twisting against the abraded mesh inside. There was a sharp stab of pain as the fingers caught against a tear, and a fresh damage notification popping up on his systems as they pressed against it. “You recall showing this for the cameras? The so-called proof of your dominance?”

Megatron did. Wished it had been lost to memory creep like much of the monotonous sameness of the mines, but he was not so lucky. He remembered doing this, showing off the froth of transfluid and energon inside the valve of a defeated opponent for a close-up and the cheers of the charged-up crowd. 

The digits left his valve and Overlord hummed. “Time to go,” he said, standing up with a smooth whine of actuators. His servo wrapped around the barrel of Megatron’s tank-alt gun and pulled, jerking the mechanisms where it met Megatron’s frame. He… could have fought. Again and always, he could have fought. But he felt open and tender and flayed, like Overlord had pried his spark casing open and played with that instead of his valve. 

Mostly what he felt was guilty. He had stopped thinking about the arena almost as soon as he was free of it. It had been easier that way. His Decepticons were growing strong, he was going to bring down the Senate and the Functionalists and the rotten core of a society that would let its citizens scream for spilt energon and death and rape as mere entertainment. He did not look back because he was afraid to see what lurked there. 

Overlord had made him face it again, after so long. Made him see frames writhing in pain beneath him as he did his best to ignore their cries or stoic grunts and focus on nothing but the warmth of a valve around his spike so that he could fulfil the expectations of his victory… 

Overlord dumped him back on the ground and put one knee on him to prevent him from moving. 

“Tarn,” Overlord crooned, reaching over to tap on cracked plating. “Are you still alive in there?”

Tarn spat static. Megatron could just see the glow of his optics from his position. 

“Have I broken you too much to move?” Overlord asked, with a certain sadistic pleasure. 

“Is… he… dead?” Tarn managed. Overlord had made a point to half-mangle his vocaliser early on in their fight, to prevent him from using his Voice. 

Overlord tutted. “No. Not dead. What a waste that would be!”

“Thought you… wanted that.”

“I’m a mercurial sort, at times,” Overlord said. “I didn’t kill  _ you _ after all.”

“What… you want?”

“Call your ship,” Overlord said. “We have what we came for; there’s no need to bother over Autobot scraps. Leave them to shiver in terror in their fortress and wait to be rescued.”

Megatron offlined his optics in relief. Coming out here to face Tarn had not been a complete mistake then. He had no doubt his intended fate would be exceedingly unpleasant, but it had at least served to save his crew. He had fulfilled his responsibility as their Captain. 

“Deathsaurus does not… trust you,” Tarn said. 

“I am well aware,” Overlord said, as smug as ever. “He’s a little pathetic isn’t he, caring so deeply about his soldiers. He knows what I might do to them, if I was provoked. He’ll obey me to spare their sparks.” 

Tarn said nothing. He activated his comms and made the call that Overlord wanted.

\----

“What is this?” Deathsaurus hissed, wings mantling. All four optics glared down at Megatron, still pinned in the dirt by Overlord’s weight. “Didn’t we come here to kill him?” He glanced at Tarn, prone and barely online. His unease was palpable. 

“Bring me some stasis cuffs,” Overlord said, a voice of command expecting to be obeyed. 

“Why?” Deathsaurus’ talons flexed. 

“Because he’s my prisoner,” Overlord replied. “And I do not trust his new show of compliance.” His fingers dug into the back of Megatron’s neck just below the edge of his helm. He could not stop his ventilations from coming faster as the old associated memory flooded into his system. Phantom needles bit at him. 

Deathsaurus screeched a command. They waited. Megatron was thankful for it - it allowed him to remaster himself. To push away the terror of this ghost of mnemosurgery. 

One of the Warworld soldiers came running out and dumped his cargo in front of Overlord, backing away as rapidly as he’d come. Overlord laughed, delighted. “Cuffs  _ and _ a collar?” he said. “You spoil me.” He reached down. 

_ Fight now _ , Megatron told himself.  _ Fight now or you may never get another chance.  _

He did nothing. He was not the mech he once was. He was not the tyrant, the conqueror, the terror of the galaxy. 

Perhaps he deserved this. 

The stasis cuffs snapped closed around his wrists as Overlord forced his arms against his backstrut. Then the collar, digging into the more delicate cables of his neck. He could feel the energy of their disabling shock crawling through them, a promise and a threat. Overlord used it as a new anchor point to drag him towards the entrance ramp of the ship. 

“Bring Tarn,” Overlord commanded. “He still has a few uses  _ I _ can think of.” 

He had spoken of those uses already. Megatron grit his dentae. His legs scraped over the decking as they transitioned from soil to metal. His left leg was numb from the knee down now - Tarn’s plasma must have melted everything functional in the joint. The wound still ached, and so did his valve, pain deep within his pelvis and throbbing with each jostling step Overlord took. 

His panel was lost somewhere in the field of blue flowers. His array was bared for anyone to see. Megatron knew the moment Deathsaurus saw it, because he spat out, “ _ Primus _ , what…?” before thinking better of it. The implications were not hard to detect. 

Overlord chuckled. “Yes Deathsaurus, what?” he asked. 

Deathsaurus reset his vocaliser. Megatron remembered him as a good soldier, before he had betrayed him, stolen a battalion and a Warworld. A mech of honour. A Decepticon the diametric opposite of Overlord. 

How closely did Overlord intend to recreate the arena? Enough to force Deathsaurus to rape him too? For his mechs he would do it, Megatron was sure. It was a better reason than simply to preserve his own spark. 

“You are despicable,” Deathsaurus said, voice cold. 

“I never pretended to be anything else,” Overlord replied. “Now, shall we get underway?”

\----

“Well Tarn, feeling better?” Overlord asked, trailing one digit down the centre of Tarn’s chestplates. The DJD’s tiny femme medic was still welding parts of his abdominal plating back together, too focused on her work to threaten him. She had actually  _ tried _ to threaten him, when he’d entered the medbay after making sure Megatron was appropriately secured in his quarters, waving a plasma cutter at his knees. She was so small it had only been amusing, besides which he wanted Tarn to survive his injuries, so he had refrained from killing her. 

Her entire body could not be much larger than his fully-spread servo. He could crush her underneath it, feel her wriggling as her plating buckled, bent, cracked, her delicate little components crumbling out onto the floor in a flood of energon. It was a pleasant fantasy. 

“What sort of game are you playing Overlord?” Tarn said, looking up at him with burning optics. Nickel had repaired his vocaliser as one of her first priorities - likely a standing order from Tarn. Vulnerability, after all, only invited victimisation. The Voice might be one of the few things that could hurt him despite the ununtrium coating his protoform. 

“The  _ delightful _ kind,” Overlord said, continuing to touch the fresh weld marks holding Tarn together. The bare metal would be tender, the light strokes a maddening, tingling pain. 

“You want me alive for a reason.” It was good that Tarn had acknowledged how easy it would have been for Overlord to kill him. Boastful self-delusion wasn’t a pretty look on anyone. “Just like you wanted to keep Megatron alive for some reason.”

Overlord hummed. “The same sort of reason,” he said. “It struck me out there that perhaps both of us were being too hasty. Our punishment of Megatron too lenient for all that he has done to you and I.”

“We are talking about Megatron,” Tarn said, cautious. “If I thought there was a need to go in hard and fast and kill him as quickly as possible it’s because he’s still dangerous. He may have showed his coward’s belly and run to the Autobots but…”

“You weren’t sure you could contain him,” Overlord finished for him, pouting in mock-sadness on Tarn’s behalf. “You were afraid, you and your little crew of sadists.”

“I didn’t know how soft he had become,” Tarn said with disgust. His optics narrowed - he was obviously thinking about Megatron, about the pitiful shadow of himself he’d shown them. Truth or lie? Even now Overlord never quite knew with Megatron. You always believed you had the better of him until the moment he tripped you into the dirt and rubbed your faceplates in how wrong you had been. 

“You want your revenge, don’t you Tarn?” Overlord said. “You want to give him the same fate that all traitors to the cause deserve.”

“Don’t forget that you’re a traitor too,” Tarn snarled. 

Overlord smiled. “That implies I ever believed in the cause to begin with. Can I be a traitor to something I never paid any mind to?”

“You wore the Decepticon brand,” Tarn said. “You took an oath. You don’t get to take that back.”

“Dogmatic as ever,” Overlord said, sighing. He slid the tip of claws out from his digits and exerted just enough pressure to scrape curls of paint from Tarn’s plating - before his servo was slapped by the tiny medic. 

“I’m trying to work here,” she said, meeting his optics with an astonishing lack of fear. “You’re getting in my way.”

Overlord took his servo away, doing nothing but smiling. 

“Of course I want to make him suffer,” Tarn said, answering his question. “I’m merely uncertain why you are being so generous as to share. I doubt it’s because you need the guide of our experience.”

“Because I want to humiliate him,” Overlord said. “I understand that some mechs feel rape is a little too personal in the torturer’s trade but really, is this anything but personal between us and him?”

His attention was on Tarn, but he saw the little medic go briefly still at his words. Then she started up her work again. Could she possibly have some kind of objection - it seemed unlikely given the company she kept. The DJD had never been hesitant about showing their work - that was half the point of having them as a deterrent. They certainly weren’t above a little forced fragging if it came to it. Besides, was torture really any  _ better _ from a moral standpoint?

That kind of question had never made a great deal of sense to Overlord. If you were strong enough, you could do what you liked. If something happened to you that you didn’t want, then you simply should have been stronger. 

There was a very quiet click as Tarn’s cooling fans came on, barely audible over the sound of Nickel’s welder. “I suppose I… hadn’t fully considered the possibilities,” he said. There was a slight edge of static in his voice. 

“You’ve been in his berth before, haven’t you Tarn?” Overlord said, unable to stop himself from pushing. It was simply in his nature. “Worshiped his spike, back when he actually meant something to you. Did you beg for the transfluid of your idol I wonder?”

Tarn said nothing, although from his look of rage he clearly wanted to. 

“Don’t worry,” Overlord told him. “You can erase all the mistakes of the past. Forget your willing submission. Punish him for disappointing you, betraying you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Yes,” Tarn admitted, through gritted dentae. “And are you going to be there watching?”

“Taking part, I do hope,” Overlord said. “I envision oh so many repeat performances, you, me, your crew of sycophants…” He trailed off, half-lost in fantasy. There was something utterly delicious in the idea of forcing Megatron to take spike after spike, his valve full of the mingled transfluid of a dozen mechs marking him, subjugated and made the lowest of the low. “As soon as you’re recovered. Come to my quarters. I’m keeping him there.”


	4. Second of Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The deep desire of your spark cannot be fulfilled without the destruction of everything you think you are. So sublimate it, project it, do anything to make it into something you can still have.

After Overlord had visited the medics and been fully repaired of the grievous damage Megatron had done to his internals, cabling and joints, his manager Powercore came to pick him up. “Tough fight,” he said diplomatically. “But - metrics were good, excellent viewing figures, high ratings. Our cut of the ad revenue should be choice.” By ‘our’, he really meant Overlord’s owner, but that satisfaction did manage to trickle down in a few respects.

“I lost,” Overlord said flatly. 

Powercore shrugged. “Hey, it had to happen eventually,” he said. “If not against this guy, then some other city-champion. You gotta be prepared for these things.” Overlord had the sudden urge to pick him up and slam him into one of the support pillars, but he refrained. The punishment he would get did not seem worth it. 

“When can I fight him again?” he asked. 

“Whoa, whoa,” Powercore said. “Cool your engines mech! You know how this works; this kinda match is a season finale sort of event. A once in a vorn sort of thing. You can’t give the crowd too much or they get bored. Sure, it’s gonna be something we come back to when the time is right, revenge match, grudge match, whatever you want to call it that brings in the punters. You’ll have your chance to spike Megatron, you just gotta be patient.”

Overlord cycled his vents, trying to control his frustration. The prospect of waiting seemed intolerable. The world felt wrong, reality out of alignment. The way things  _ should _ have gone - his unquestioned, inevitable victory - was just out of reach, just there to be corrected. He  _ had _ to correct this. 

“Fine,” he said, not happy with it. “What does my stellar cycle look like when I get back to Stanix?”

Powercore relaxed. “Ah, just some easy stuff to let the repairs bed in. Low level wannabes, some quick energon to keep the gravel wet. Maybe some dominance matches to remind folks that just ‘cos you got fragged…” He saw the look on Overlord’s face and stopped abruptly. “To help you let off some steam!” He said instead, grinning nervously. 

Overlord glared at him. It shouldn’t change things. At the higher levels of skill gladiators had too much value to go around killing them - that was why dominance matches had been invented in the first place. The occasional loss and the punishment of rape that came with it was simply expected. But that was for  _ ordinary _ mechs. Not for  _ him _ . 

If anyone thought differently there would be Unicron to pay.

\----

Pinned down in the arena. Gravel digging into his backstrut. Heavy weight over him, limbs immobile and unmoving as though gravity itself had intensified a thousandfold. He was not being held down by servos or chains or piercing blades… The roar of the crowd was distant, the stands a smear of colour without definition. The world was without definition, save that part of it directly in front of him. 

Megatron looked at him, smirking, servos holding his thighs spread wide. His spike glistened between them, rubbing gently, maddeningly, over Overlord’s anterior node. 

“Don’t look at them,” he said. “They don’t matter. This is all that matters. Here. Us.” His spike dipped and pressed slowly into Overlord’s valve. There was no pain. Internal nodes started to light up with connection. 

“You belong to me now,” Megatron told him. “I own you. I’ve won you.  _ This _ ,” - punctuated by a powerful jerk of his hips - “is mine now. No-one else may have it. Your valve. Your node. Your spike.” His servo was over Overlord’s spike housing, coaxing, and it slid free and out without Overlord’s consent. His vents came swiftly. He could not move. All strength was gone from him. 

Megatron’s spike pulsed inside him. His servo stroked Overlord’s spike in time with his thrusting. Overlord opened his mouth to cry out and give voice to an emotion he did not understand and… 

He woke up. 

He was lying on his berth in the gladiator quarters of Stanix Arena. He was alone. The night air was cold, but he could feel the heat radiating off his plating. Beneath the insulation tarp that was required in this climate his panel was open, his array bared. When he flipped back the tarp, his spike was just poking out of its housing, part-way to pressurised. Low-level charge tingled along his circuitry, although it was quickly subsiding. 

Overlord forced his spike to retract and his panel to close again. He lay down on his side and pulled the tarp back over him. He was not a mech much given to introspection, content to follow his whims where they led without worrying too much about where they might have come from but… he did not know what to do about this. What this meant. 

How dare Megatron do this! Bad enough to defeat him, but to disturb his recharge as well? 

He did his best to quiet his processor. One dream was irrelevant. What he  _ needed _ was to fight Megatron again. To make things right. To defeat him and prove that Overlord had merely been unlucky, rather than weaker, lesser. 

That would chase these strange thoughts away.

\----

The unease in Overlord’s spark started to settle after the first few megacycles back in Stanix. Killing things helped, both bots and the various mechanimals or strange organic lifeforms the arena organisers managed to procure from backwater planets across the galaxy. He felt more himself once he had reasserted his dominance over the local cohort of gladiators as well, fragging familiar valves and reminding the crowd why they cheered for him in the first place. He did not forget about Megatron, and he spent at least a cycle per megacycle running match simulations over and over in his processor. He still couldn’t see it, the reason he had lost, not quite, and yet understanding always felt close enough to taste.

There were more dreams, like the first. He did not think about them. 

A full vorn passed almost before he realised it. He began to agitate for the rematch he had been promised, and even though it hadn’t been very long, Powercore eventually agreed to make enquiries. 

Megatron’s manager, Brickbat, agreed. Perhaps it had been a dull season in Tarn, or perhaps Megatron also wanted this fight to happen. Perhaps he had come to realise the common gladiators of his home city could not possibly match up to the challenge that Overlord represented. The thought was a strange, odd hope inside Overlord’s spark. 

It would be in Tarn again. Overlord spent even more time analysing Megatron not only in his memories of their fight, watching the recording of it the cameras had caught, but looking at the other matches Megatron had fought since. His style was flexible, adaptable. It was clearly one of the reasons he was so good. There had been other dominance matches in the past vorn but after watching the first losing mech being raped Overlord skipped over those parts of the files. He felt a seething mixture of anger and… longing? 

It was simply because he wanted to see Megatron put in his place. That must be it, surely. 

The match was to be similar to their last in format, with racks of weapons scattered around the arena for them to pick and choose from. Overlord felt that he was ready. He would be more careful this time. 

The megacycle finally came. Overlord strode out onto the gravel with a powerful anticipation glowing in his spark, ever line and cable warm and ready for what was to come. From the gate in the opposite wall Megatron appeared, his grey plating daubed with red stripes and glyphs in the Tarnish style. Overlord intended to wash them away in a tide of Megatron’s own energon. He bared his dentae, chose a durasteel sword, and waited for the signal. 

When the klakon blared out across the arena they met in a clang of metal, breaking apart and coming together in a vicious dance of blades and dodging limbs and plating flared with aggression. Megatron fought calmly, always poised, his processor whirring behind his optics. Overlord could see him thinking. He pressed his attack, always there, trying to force Megatron to react rather than analyse. Several times Megatron tried the same trick of aiming for the same section of plating, weakening him for a final strike, but Overlord now recognised that it  _ was _ a trick and did not let him. 

It was the same feverish challenge as it had been before. Overlord forgot the crowds, forgot the arena, forgot everything that was not this fight. He and Megatron were the only things in the world that existed. This was a puzzle to solve - not just a problem for brute strength but requiring every scrap of his attention, every kernel of tactical processing. 

Their first match had been long - this went on longer. Overlord began to wonder who would tire first; they had both been fully fueled beforehand, but they both had powerful frames that could burn through energon at a rate unmatched by any mid or high caste bot. Alterations for the arena had obscured Megatron’s original alt-mode and Overlord found it hard to judge his fuel efficiency. He had two alts of his own; a jet and a tank, both made for war. When he had finished forging and his final frame had integrated he had been told there was only one function he was suitable for - violence. Since Cybertron had no current need of soldiers the only possible place for him was the arena. Which meant he needed a sponsor - an  _ owner _ . 

Overlord could certainly admit he could imagine no other place he would fit on this planet. In general he did not mind this life. 

Megatron had not come here forged or cold-constructed. Quite where he had appeared from was not clear, but these things were often kept secret to prevent any possible advantage that knowledge might provide. No matter. Overlord’s tanks were at 43%. He could fight for cycles more. 

Megatron was trying to push him back towards the arena wall. Overlord lunged, his sword sparking against Megatron’s and running down the length of the other blade to hit the crossbar in a jarring impact. It was enough to send the weapon spinning away, scattering gravel and out of immediate reach. Megatron feinted towards it, then dodged backwards when Overlord blocked his path. 

Now see who could be backed into a corner! Overlord corralled him with an intricate web of strikes with his blade, leaving Megatron no path but to retreat and be trapped against the wall of the arena as he had intended for  _ him _ . Megatron was still too agile to let the sword strike him anywhere important, but even blocking with the heavy armour of his forearms was still weakening him. 

Overlord smirked, feeling the vicious rush of impending victory. The world was falling into place, into the way things  _ should  _ have been, and he was charged up and ready for it. 

Megatron had nowhere left to go. Overlord struck… 

Only on viewing the footage back later was Overlord able to see exactly what he had done. It was a strange kind of half-transformation which had to have strained his t-cog painfully, but it had been enough to shift him just barely out of the path of the incoming blade. Instead of sinking deep into his plating, the weapon instead chopped into the arena wall and lodged there. 

Megatron tackled him, and Overlord failed to let go of the sword quickly enough to respond. He hit the gravel and found his arm trapped in a hold similar to the one he himself had attempted to use during their last fight. He could feel his cables screaming as Megatron flexed, then could not suppress a cry himself when with a sudden powerful heave Megatron broke the central struts of the limb in three places. 

Overlord tried to contort enough to break the grapple, but his system flooded with damage warnings and error messages, refusing to let him inflict more damage on himself. He struggled, and was distracted enough by pain that he didn’t see the first kick coming. Megatron’s pede collided with his helm and snapped his head back, cracking an optic and turning his world briefly into static. 

It was an effective tactic, Overlord managed to think in between moments of white-out daze, and Megatron kept it up until he could barely understand who he was let alone consider fighting back. 

When he managed to force a brief and deeply unpleasant hard reboot and came around, Megatron’s spike was already inside him. Overlord had trouble forcing his optics to focus on what was happening, but when he did he saw nothing but the same blank expression, the same far-away glazed look, the same  _ utter lack _ of  _ attention _ . 

Overlord wanted to scream with frustration. 

\----

Less than a quartex after that, back in Stanix, his opponent for the day looked up at him with an intake dripping with his own energon, spat it out and said, “Did you enjoy being Megatron of Tarn’s fragtoy?” Overlord paused with his spike buried hilt deep in the mech’s valve and stared. The gladiator smiled at him. Several dentae were missing, scattered somewhere amongst the arena gravel. “You must have liked it if you let him win again. I guess you  _ want  _ to submit to him really.”

Overlord felt his visual display white out for a moment. Rage, deep and dark and uncontrollable, welled up from his spark. He snarled, feeling the claws in his digits extending, and tore downwards. He carved into armour plating, then deeper into the mech’s internals as energon splashed his faceplates. The mech beneath him let out a wet sob of pain as his fuel pump was carved from him, as the talons raked across his very sparkchamber. 

The point of this, the dominance, the rape, was entirely forgotten. Overlord was not thinking at all. 

When he sat back, spike pulling from a greying corpse, he was coated in the bright pink of innermost energon from his servos to his chestplate. There were cheers and laughs from the crowd, but booing as well. He supposed they had been this gladiator’s fans - if you could use such a word for mechs who enjoyed seeing a fighter fragged as well as triumphing. That had been… foolish. 

From the faint hint of a smile on the body’s faceplates though, he wondered if that hadn’t been the point of it. An elaborate suicide and perhaps a means of revenge. His punishment for slaughtering what he was not supposed to would not be light. 

So be it. He could not have anyone thinking… thinking  _ that _ . 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first night on board the Peaceful Tyranny.

Overlord had dragged him through the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ and chained him to his berth. Megatron should not have been surprised that Overlord kept chains lying around in his room - it was the sort of thing he would do. He had almost been expecting to be raped again then and there, but Overlord had merely patted his valve with a smirk and left. 

He was alone. There was little to do save think. 

The crew of the  _ Lost Light _ would survive without him - with the DJD and Deathsaurus’ soldiers gone there was more than enough time to call for rescue, to get off planet and track down the ship and the mutineers on board. They would assume that he had been killed by Tarn; Ravage knew what he had left to do and he would only hold his glossa until the moment it became clear that he would not be coming back. They would not think of the truth, when Tarn and Overlord had made their intentions so plain. 

There was no reason to believe that he would be rescued. 

And so what now? He was trapped on board a hostile vessel, cuffed and collared with stasis devices which would knock out his motor circuitry if he tried to break out of them. He had no allies here. Even previously loyal Decepticons - and these were certainly not that - would scorn helping him now that he had turned away from them and accepted an Autobot brand on his chest. Besides, seeing him like this would only cause disgust, not pity. 

When had the attitudes of the arena taken such a hold in Decepticon culture? It had baffled him as he had gradually become aware of the problem over the vorns, but he had never been able to find the right way to combat it. It wasn’t as though the low-caste mechs who made up most of the Decepticon ranks would have ever been able to afford a seat at the side of the arena, or even the subscription service which broadcast the matches across the planet and beyond. Perhaps some of them had pirated the show feeds, but even that cost something. The arena was where you went when you had nothing, when selling yourself into slavery and nearly certain death would at least mean not dying right  _ now _ , or enough shanix to support someone you cared about.

The mines hadn’t been like that, he remembered. Down in the dark, no mech thought that using your valve somehow made you lesser or subordinate to others. You took pleasure where you could, for there was so little of it to go around. You relied on your fellow mechs, because the collective was far safer than being alone. He had always supposed the same way of thinking to be true across the lower caste. Perhaps he had been wrong - he had seen so little of the outside world between the mine closing and the company selling him to the arena and being lost in the horrors of his new reality. 

He had led the Decepticons. There was no-one else to blame. He should have done something to excise the corruption - looking back Megatron did not understand why he had been so complacent. Why rape had become something he tolerated, rather than something which earned the perpetrator swift punishment. Had he really been so focused on the Autobots, on the organics, on  _ winning _ , that he had stopped looking at his own side?

More guilt, to pile upon that which was already swirling in his spark. His fuel-tank churned, and he could no longer blame it on the Fool’s Energon. 

He was the architect of his own fate, of this future of uncertain length, Overlord’s berth toy until he finally had satisfied the urges that had been driving him all these millennia. 

As though summoned by the thought, the door slid open. Overlord was briefly silhouetted against the light of the corridor outside before he stepped in, optics glowing with pleasure. 

“Finally you’re in the place you belong,” Overlord said, stalking over. He palmed Megatron’s helm, forcing his head back. “Beneath me.”

“Doesn’t your sadism ever get dull?” Megatron asked him. His frame was tensing, anticipating violence, knowing something would be coming but not exactly when. He didn’t like it. Waiting for the knife to fall. 

“If it does, then you’re simply not being imaginative enough,” Overlord replied. He slid the thumb of his other servo over Megatron’s lips. “Open up.”

Megatron ignored the command, which Overlord must have expected. Overlord pressed in against his clenched dentae anyway. Was he strong enough to break them? Dentae were tough sheets of sharpened durasteel, but Overlord could certainly dent durasteel armour if he really put his mind to it. Megatron met Overlord’s optics - they were both thinking the same thing. 

He opened his mouth, just slightly. Overlord’s thumb slid in, and then Megatron bit down. Plating crunched, and his mouth filled with a brief flood of energon before the small lines auto-clamped - then his dentae hit the central ununtrium coated strut and stopped. Overlord shuddered very slightly but not with pain. His glossae flickered out to wet his own full lips, and Megatron could smell the slight hint of ozone made by charge starting to course though his system. 

Of course the fragger would get off on that. Of course. Still, his  _ spike _ didn’t have an ununtrium core, so he had better think again. 

Overlord slid his thumb free, sloughing loose plating, and pushed his first two digits in instead. “Again?” he asked, half-mocking, half-hopeful. Megatron tightened his jaw enough to hold them in place - so long as Overlord didn’t exert too much force - but not enough to cause damage. It was the closest he thought he could come to meaningful resistance. 

“So many speeches with that mouth,” Overlord said. “So many meaningless words. I’ll see it put to better use from now on.” Slowly he pushed, digits sliding between Megatron’s dentae in a screech of damaged metal, in and up over his glossa. Reacting to the intrusion, oral lubricants started to flow. 

“With time you might be broken to suck spike, but for now I’m happy to frag your intake.” Overlord twisted his fingers sideways, hooking in more until he had four digits tucked at the corner of Megatron’s jaw spreading his mouth open. His panel slid back and his spike sprang forth, pressurising quickly. Still he took his time, rubbing the head of it over Megatron’s lips.

The thought struck him suddenly - had Overlord  _ ever _ had consensual sex? Did he understand what it was he was missing always taking and taking? That two mechs might genuinely  _ want _ to give each other pleasure and would try very hard to do so? Did he imagine Megatron had never had a spike in his mouth before, had never brought a partner to overload with a glossa he knew full well was talented in more ways than the one he was known for?

No. It must not -  _ could _ not - fit into the image of Megatron that Overlord had in his mind. Into the framework of dominance that seemed to be all he knew. 

Overlord slowly slid his spike between Megatron’s bared dentae, over his glossa, until it hit the back of his intake. Unused to the sensation after so many vorns, his fuel pipe contracted and spasmed, making Overlord’s optics flicker in pleasure. He started a languid pace, fragging into that tightness, holding Megatron’s helm still. There was no point in trying to wriggle free. Megatron offlined his optics and tried to put himself away from all this, to reach the kind of detached horror arena victories had brought him into. 

Overlord snarled, his engine roaring. “Look at me,” he said, digits digging in at the corner of Megatron’s mouth and clawing against the inner lining. “Keep your optics online and  _ look at me _ .” 

It was the unexpected loss of calm more than the command itself that made Megatron obey. Overlord looked furious, but he settled slightly once Megatron met his gaze again. He thrust harder, pounding his intake in a way that sent error messages pinging Megatron’s system in protest. Oral fluid collected and spilled from Megatron’s mouth, dripping from the line of his jaw, coating the digits that were preventing him from biting down. It was unpleasant, but at least it held no specific connotations of the arena for him. Gladiators  _ did _ bite, and no-one had ununtrium struts in their fingers back then. 

The taste of sharp salt and oil was heavy on his glossa, as well as that ozone tang. He was glad that unlike many organic races, he had no need to use his intake to breathe. 

Overlord was growing close. With a groan he pulled out, let go of Megatron’s mouth, and stroked himself to completion. Hot transfluid splattered over Megatron’s faceplates, even over the lenses of his optics. How exactly was he meant to get  _ that _ clean? 

Not that he had been given any chance to clean himself at all yet. His plating was still streaked with soil and the dried remnants of Overlord’s  _ last _ overload. 

Overlord’s engine purred as he looked over his work. With a smile he knelt down, almost in Megatron’s lap, took his helm in both servos, and licked the transfluid from around his mouth in a mockery of a kiss. Megatron growled and tried to bite him, but Overlord was too fast, whipping his glossa away from snapping dentae just in time. 

“Now that  _ would _ be awkward to have repaired,” Overlord said, grinning. 

Megatron said nothing. No taunt he could think of held any weight. 

Overlord stood up, jerking at Megatron’s collar in a rattle of chains. Megatron’s leg had not been repaired and the knee joint still would not take his weight, but Overlord was strong enough to bodily heave him up onto the wide recharge slab. Hedonist that he was, there was a plush layer of padding under fine mesh lining the surface. Overlord pressed him down onto his front and flopped down half beside him and half on top of him. Megatron stiffened, his plating pressing in tight to his frame. Did Overlord truly intend to recharge like this? 

“Tarn will be repaired soon,” Overlord murmured into his audial. “He’s going to enjoy you very much.”


	6. The Punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overlord learns a few new tricks, but a better understanding of sexual relationships certainly isn't one of them.

“You stupid fragger, why the Pit did you go and do that!” Powercore yelled at him the moment he stalked out of the arena into the exit tunnel. “Do you have any idea how much paying the offlining fee for him is gonna  _ cost _ ?”

Overlord sneered. “I don’t much care.”

“You should care,” Powercore replied. “Indirius is going to be  _ furious  _ with you!”

Ah yes, no doubt his owner would be. As though Overlord had not earned him shanix far over and above the price of one single mid-tier gladiator during the vorns he had fought in the arena. High caste mechs always seemed to hate to pay for anything they didn’t have to, no matter how much money they had. 

“I will await whatever  _ punishment _ he deems fit,” Overlord replied, not really caring much either way. It would be pain, of course, but he was well familiar with pain. The prospect of more of it did not trouble him nearly as much as listening to that  _ accusation _ had. 

Powercore flinched as his comm buzzed. “That’ll be him now,” he said. “Get yourself off to the medics. I’ll come find you when he’s done yelling at me.”

Overlord did as he was told. His injuries were very minor, but his claws would have to be resharpened and there were a few dents that it would be easier to have popped out than wait for self-repair to heal. Besides, he wanted a chance to use the washracks - dried energon was sticky in a way that was sometimes rather arousing, but currently was merely tiresome. 

As promised, Powercore turned up again half a cycle later. “Well?” Overlord said, raising a brow-ridge. He felt more settled now that he was clean. 

“He’s got something in mind already,” Powercore said, hesitant. “He told me the fastest way to recoup the costs is to… well, to put it plainly, to pimp you out to some high-caste mech who’s willing to pay really well for the privilege.”

Overlord leaned forwards, baring his dentae in a snarl. “I thought I had made my position on that  _ very clear _ .” He knew it was a common enough practise since high caste mechs seemed to love the idea of forcing the might of a gladiator to bow to them, as though shanix was the same as strength, as though they could simply  _ pay _ for what they could never  _ win _ . “I will not be hired out like some common piece of shareware, and I will gut any mech that tries that, high caste or not.”

Powercore fidgeted. “Yeah, I know that,” he said. “And the Senator was willing to allow it before, back when you were still sealed and it would have y’know, undermined your marketing - his words, his words,” he yelped, at Overlord’s increasingly unhappy expression. “Anyhow, Megatron’s already had that. So.”

“So now anyone gets a turn, is that it?” Overlord said, low and dangerous. Newly sharpened claws slid out of their sheathes. 

“I mean, you did frag up,” Powercore reminded him. “If you were okay with it, it wouldn’t make a very good punishment. And Indirius said there was no point in just whipping you ‘cos you only ever pretend to pay attention to that.” 

That showed a level of insight Overlord had not been aware his master had of him. Troubling. 

“And when I tear his chosen noble into little pieces?” he asked. 

“Yeah, Indirius said to tell you he had worse things in mind if you didn’t lie back and take it.” Powercore reset his vocaliser, clearly unsettled by having to threaten Overlord as the Senator’s proxy. “Like… if you don’t agree to this, he’ll cut your energon in half until the debt’s paid off and… do I really need to lay out what that would mean for you after the first few deca-cycles?”

He didn’t. That amount of energon wasn’t enough to keep Overlord properly fuelled even when he was acting at his most efficient. He would slowly start to burn through his reserves. He would have to hold back in each fight. Eventually he wouldn’t be  _ able _ to fight, not well enough to win. Which would have the same consequences as this first option, only the rape would be out in the open for everyone to see. 

“ _ That _ would undercut the marketing just as much,” he snarled. “He’ll lose shanix in the long run.”

Powercore shook his head. “I don’t think he cares,” he said. “He was  _ really _ angry this time.”

Overlord narrowed his optics, deep in thought. Indirius had cornered him well enough. At least it was clear the Senator prefered the punishment which would recoup his costs as efficiently as possible rather than the one which was more humiliating. 

“Fine,” he said. “Tell him I will refrain from murdering whatever piece of slag is willing to pay to frag me.”

\----

“He wants your vocaliser to be deactivated before you go in,” Powercore said, fidgeting with his servos. 

“He doesn’t want to hear anything that might break the illusion of my submission, you mean,” Overlord replied, sneering. “Very well. I don’t really care at this point.”

Powercore relaxed. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s a quick job from a medic, just a little line of code dropped in…”

“What’s the name of this noble slag-sucker?” Overlord asked. 

“I wasn’t sure if you cared about knowing that,” Powercore said, resetting his optics. “Cadminus. He owns a factory producing mining equipment…”

“How much did he pay for this, precisely?”

“Indirius asked for the whole of the offlining-price and there weren’t that many able to get the shanix together so quickly… eighty thousand,” Powercore finished quickly, in the face of Overlord’s baleful glare. 

“Eighty thousand? For that pathetic excuse of a gladiator?” It seemed difficult to credit it, but Powercore had no reason to lie to him - unless he thought it would make him feel better to be sold for such a high price. 

Powercore shrugged. “Let’s get it over with,” he said. “Nobles aren’t generally keen on waiting.”

A half-cycle later Overlord walked out of the medical bay rubbing his throat. Experimentally he tried to activate his vocaliser and his system returned an ‘inactive’ report. Being prevented from speaking his mind was already more irritating than he had anticipated it might be. He let his engine growl as Powercore walked him upstairs, ascending from the gladiator quarters up to the arena seating. There was no match on right now, and the corridors were dark and empty aside from a few cleaning drones that wheeled past. It seemed the noble wanted to frag him in his private box, with a full view of the arena floor below. 

Of course. 

Cadminus was slender and delicate in the way of most nobles. Chrome plating with a few copper accents shone even in low light, and he stank of fancy polish and wax. His blue optics took in Overlord’s frame with naked greed when Powercore showed him in. 

“Magnificent,” the noble said. “Truly magnificent.”

_ So glad I meet with your approval _ , Overlord could not say. 

Cadminus came over and ran his digits down Overlord’s chest plates, over the ridges of his abdomen that hid empty missile pods and a rapid-fire solid-projectile cannon - both weapons forbidden in the arena. They were deactivated, and would remain so unless he became a soldier in some vague future. His plating was not sensitive, and the noble was barely pressing hard enough for him to feel it. “You can leave now,” he said, waving Powercore away. Overlord’s manager fled the room, the door shutting and locking behind him. 

“You’ve never done anything like this before,” Cadminus said, smiling. He barely came up to the lower part of Overlord’s chest - the idea of this tiny, weak mech ever defeating him was utterly laughable. “I’ve wanted to be the first one to get a taste of this for a long time, ever since the first time I saw you fight. There’s few who can say they’ve had something so special.”

_ This is nothing special _ , Overlord wanted to tell him.  _ You’ve paid for a lie.  _ He had to admit that shutting him up had been a wise tactic for this mech to take. 

“There are a few rules to how this goes,” Cadminus said. “You obey my instructions to the letter. A little show of resistance is fine, but don’t try and pad it out too long. I touch you, you don’t touch me. If I want to see your spike I’ll ask for it, but let’s see how the mood strikes me. We’re done when I say we’re done and not before - I do plan to make the experience last.

“Now, kneel.”

Overlord snarled, silently, and thought very hard about kicking him through the window. The massive pane of transparent polymer couldn’t be  _ that _ tough. But… it wasn’t as though it was real. Cadminus wasn’t stronger than him, he couldn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want. Overlord had chosen this because it was slightly less humiliating than the other option he’d been given, and at least this fragging was  _ private _ . Aside from Cadminus and his irrelevant high-caste friends, no-one was going to know. 

He knelt down. 

“Lean back,” Cadminus told him. “Put your weight on your servos and spread your thighs for me.” His glossa flickered out over his slim lips as Overlord obeyed. “Show me your array.” 

Overlord slid the panel back, already starting to get bored of this. He could see, looking from the other side, that ordering another mech around into some mockery of capitulation in their rape might be arousing, but it rather required the ability to  _ back it up _ . Otherwise it was… this, which was his essentially willing submission, and Cadmius must  _ know _ that, mustn’t he? He had to understand that none of this was enforceable. Overlord could easily have decided that accepting the certain death sentence for killing a noble was worth not getting raped by one, now couldn’t he, and where would all this false power be then? 

Overlord felt a sudden surge of hatred for these high-caste mechs, who thought they understood power. No. Their power was a dream that they fooled mechs into buying into and no more than that. An illusion, though one with surprising strength given everyone who failed to see it. 

Cadminus walked over, heeled pedes clicking on the metal of the floor. He got down on one knee and unceremoniously pushed two fingers into Overlord’s valve. “Still dry,” he said, sounding almost amused. “Traditional for the arena, of course. Sometimes gladiators have this idea they should lube up before coming to see a high-caste mech, but really, there’s a reason I’m not hiring shareware.” 

He drew his digits out and pressed them delicately to Overlord’s chestplates. “Onto your back. Arms above your head.”

Overlord moved, a slow controlled descent of cables and hydraulics, of shifting weight. He continued to look at the noble, a prolonged stare that might possibly unsettle him. This leashed power was a threat - but then again the idea of having that threat tamed and obedient was what Cadminus wanted. 

Cadminus walked a circle around him, admiring him. Then he crouched down over Overlord’s outstretched arms and put his servos under Overlord’s chin, tilting his helm back. He slid his modesty panel back and pressurised his spike. 

“Unlike tough brutes like you, I would rather not chafe my spike fragging you utterly dry,” Cadminus said. Overlord took note of how irritated that smugness in the mech’s voice made him feel. It was interesting. Possibly useful, as a tool. “Besides which you have such a wonderful mouth.” He slid the tip of his spike against Overlord’s lips. “Suck me.”

Overlord let his lips part slightly so Cadminus could slide his spike past them. He was uncertain about this - if the noble expected active participation from him he had chosen a poor area to request it in. He had never had his mouth anywhere near someone’s array before, or even the reverse. It wasn’t done in the arena, and he had never taken a mech outside of that circle of energon and gravel. 

Cadminus was smirking at him. Ah. Part of the game then. Overlord remained motionless, a little experiment of his own. Was Cadminus a patient mech? 

It seemed not. After a few moments where Cadminus did little but rock ever so slightly into his intake he vented out and said, in pitying tones, “Open your jaw wider. Keep your lips tight, and your dentae out of the way. You might do something with your glossae, perhaps?” A condescending little suggestion. 

No point in pretending to stupidity. Overlord did as he was told. Cadminus’ spike grew slick with oral lubricant. After some lazy fragging, building charge that Overlord could smell as ozone on the air, Cadminus pulled away and stood up. He moved back round to look greedily down at Overlord’s array, still displayed between splayed thighs. 

“Feel free to show pain, or do that delightful stoic arena thing,” Cadminus told him. “I like to see both.”

Overlord very much doubted this little mech was capable of hurting him. Even if his spike was large for his size, he was still much smaller than Overlord. He certainly wasn’t Megatron… 

For a moment his processor jumped uncontrollably to the thought of Megatron standing in Cadminus’ place, ordering him around like this, focused on him with burning attention… No. He cut the chain off before it could complete itself. No. He would not allow even the simulated idea. 

Cadminus knelt and drove into him. Overlord shifted slightly in discomfort, but as he had suspected there was very little pain. It was more of a dull burning, a sense of heat and pressure, but nothing like the punishing fullness of the two previous times he had been taken. It was no particular hardship to lie here and let it happen. It was a little like waiting through some uncomfortable medical procedure when the pain patch hadn’t fully taken, as they sometimes didn’t. 

Cadminus raked digits over his plating, pitiful attempts at clawing at him. The pressure he could exert was minimal even when he did his best to dig into seams. Overlord ignored him. He would have mocked him, had he been capable of speaking. Instead he amused himself reliving recent memory files of his victories and imagining what terrible things he could do to the noble had he wished. 

Cadminus overloaded inside him with a cry. Finally. Overlord started to sit up, but Cadminus put a servo on his chestplates again. 

“I didn’t give you permission to move,” he said. “We’re far from done here.” He slid out of Overlord’s valve and stood up. Overlord didn’t know what he imagined they were going to do now. Charge didn’t build up again that quickly after the rapid dispersal of an overload, and muted as he was Overlord was not much of a conversationalist at the moment. 

“Roll over, and rise onto your servos and knees,” Cadminus commanded. Overlord hesitated for a few moments, deeply annoyed, but reminded himself he had agreed to this farce. The noble walked round and presented his slightly depressurised spike for Overlord’s attention. “Clean me up,” he said. 

This was starting to feel genuinely humiliating. Looking up at that still-hungry expression on the other mech’s faceplates though, he could feel that his hesitance and displeasure were half of what Cadminus wanted from him anyway. So how best to undermine that? Perhaps with a  _ show _ of submission? Locking optics with the noble he began to lick and suck the mech’s array with languid delicate motions. Cadminus shivered, letting loose a small moan. 

“Very good,” he said, but with a little less of that cold-iron control in his voice. Once all traces of transfluid and - to Overlord’s surprise, since he hadn’t thought himself injured - a very slight trace of energon were gone, Cadminus pushed his helm away. “Let’s… put you through your paces.”

By this it appeared he meant forcing Overlord to adopt and hold various strained postures and positions, testing out his strength, endurance and flexibility. He moved Overlord around like a doll. It was very dull, but it did do well to pass the time, and Cadminus appeared to be enjoying it. A few times he stopped and studied him with the intensity of a mech writing an image to long-term memory. Eventually he had built up charge enough to frag Overlord again, taking him on his belly this time. 

It set the pattern for the rest of the night. By the end of it Overlord felt like Cadminus must have put his servos over every inch of his frame, made himself familiar with every plate of his armour. The noble mech looked utterly relaxed and fragged-out, in comparison to Overlord who mostly felt chafed and low on recharge. 

“You can go,” Cadminus told him, lounging on one of the chairs in the box with one leg hiked up over the arm of it. “This was a wonderful night. I’ll give my compliments to Senator Indirius. Perhaps we can even do it again sometime.”

Not if Overlord had anything to say about it. He slammed his modesty panel closed and left the room. He needed to use the washracks. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarn gets his turn.

Despite the unpleasantness of Overlord’s frame draped over his own, Megatron managed to drop off into recharge in the end. When he roused some time later, it was at least in part because of the growing ache in his shoulders. Having his arms held behind his back by the stasis cuffs was putting tension through the joints, pulling cables and lines taut and stretching them against his basal protoform. The tension was starting to cause metal stress and damage. 

Megatron was familiar with this in concept. It was a simple method of torture. Without relief the pressure would continue to grow, fraying cables, crimping energon lines shut, interfering with motor and sensory circuitry, ramping up the pain with it. Eventually pain would turn into numbness as the limbs began to shut down from the lack of fuel. If released early enough self-repair could deal with it, but if not then sometimes a complete overhaul from the shoulders down was needed before the limbs would be anything other than stiff dead weight. 

He shifted, trying to wriggle and move the axis of tension slightly. It had no meaningful effect, aside from to wake Overlord up. 

“Good morning,” Overlord murmured into his audial. “Isn’t this a wonderful thing to wake up to? The so-called mighty Megatron in my berth. Do you still feel powerful now?”

Megatron had no intention of being drawn into conversation. He had nothing to say to Overlord that hadn’t been said too many times to count in past millennia. The time to act to curb this sort of vile behaviour had been in the early days of the movement - why in the Pit had he ever let Overlord into their ranks? 

The choice had seemed simple at the time. They were few, and the tools of the Functionalist institution were many. Megatron had believed he could not afford to refuse any willing friend in their time of need - and they had been gladiators, brothers in a regime of such utter evil it was obvious no sane mech could have willingly embraced the monsters it made of them. More fool him. Overlord had felt no external pressure to rape and subdugate the mechs he conquered - he would have done so just as gladly if nothing about the arena had ever existed. Yet Megatron had not seen that, and then… 

And then Overlord was still too useful. The ends justify the means, he had told himself. So he did nothing, and thus… this. 

“You must stop running away into your processor,” Overlord said, claws raking softly over the side of his helm, all implied threat. “Not unless I give you permission.”

“My mind is my own,” Megatron replied. “You may have my frame captive…”

Overlord tutted, cutting him off. “Every part of you belongs to me now. I admit it will take time to break you but time is something we have so much of, don’t we?”

Megatron couldn’t say that he was wrong. That was the worst of it. 

“Now…” Overlord pulled him onto his side and slotted in against his backstrut. Megatron’s arms and servos pressed into Overlord’s abdomen and he could feel the ridges of his missile bank there. One servo lifted Megatron’s leg up, baring his open array, and the other forced him to turn his helm to see Overlord looking down at him with familiar sadistic pleasure. Overlord’s spike nudged at his entrance. “I believe there is one sure way to begin the mega-cycle in a good mood.”

Megatron grit his dentae as Overlord shoved in. His valve felt hot and tight and his system flared unhappy warnings at him about improper usage of his equipment. No doubt his torn mesh was inflamed with repair nanites doing their best to fix the damage which was now only going to worsen. 

“You can’t do anything to stop this,” Overlord said, grinning at him. “Perhaps you’ll fall to begging when it all gets too much for you, but it won’t help. No-one is coming for you, and even if they were no-one could ever beat me to win you from me. If only you weren’t so weak, if only you had  _ fought _ , you might have managed to defeat me once again but instead you rolled over on your belly and practically  _ begged _ me to take you.” 

“Violence…”

“Oh what? Violence isn’t the answer?” Overlord asked mockingly. “You used to understand how the world worked Megatron. The strong take and the weak submit - even the old Senate knew that, though they dressed it in silly words of function and forgeright and the laws they made.”

Megatron startled slightly in surprise, hearing a form of his own words come from Overlord’s mouth. 

“I did  _ read _ your work,” Overlord told him, sounding disappointed in his, what? Lack of faith in him? “I didn’t care for your precious Cause, but please. I did pay attention.”

“Should I be flattered?” Megatron asked. 

“Absolutely,” Overlord replied, still fragging him, still taking his pleasure. The ache in Megatron’s shoulders was starting to be overwhelmed by the ache in his valve, a deep pain that made his fuel-pump churn. 

The door chimed. Overlord laughed quietly, and signaled it to open. 

Megatron could just about see Tarn standing there even though Overlord was still forcing him to look primarily at him. He saw the reaction from the corner of his optics, the moment of shock and the start towards backpedalling. 

“No need to run away Tarn,” Overlord called out. “You’re here by invitation of course. Do come in. Give me a moment to finish, and you’ll get your chance.”

Tarn hesitated. Then he entered the room, letting the door slide shut behind him. He didn’t say anything, and Megatron didn’t have a very good view of him, but he was there as a shadow in the corner of his visual field. In the silence that fell, broken primarily by the noise of Overlord’s pounding movement, his vents and roaring fans, Megatron could just hear the sound of a second set of cooling fans whirring on. 

“Do you like watching this Tarn?” Overlord asked, voice edged a little in static as charge affected his vocaliser. 

“I suppose it is always pleasing to see traitors receive their due,” Tarn replied. 

“Hmm.” Megatron’s helm was still held still, forced to look up at Overlord who was smiling over at Tarn. “Do you become quite as revved up for all the traitors you chase down? Or just the ones that catch your fancy?”

“Are you asking a professional question?” Tarn replied, as though the two of them weren’t talking over his trussed-up frame. As though Overlord wasn’t on the verge of overloading into him. Megatron grit his dentae. It was just another power play. Another of Overlord’s games. “I feel rape can certainly be an appropriate tool of correction, as can any means that strikes fear into the spark of mechs wavering in their loyalty. When I choose to use it depends on a variety of factors, which I would be happy to discuss with you - later.”

“Then don’t let me… delay…” Overlord said, dissolving into static as he tipped over the edge. Even the rush of his transfluid was painful this morning, stinging Megatron’s abused mesh. 

Overlord pulled out and let go of Megatron’s helm, though he maintained his grip on his thigh, continuing to bare his array which was once again dripping with fluids - transfluid mixed with more energon, no doubt. “Well?” he asked. “How do you want him?”

Tarn hesitated. Megatron craned to look at him - Tarn’s optics were fixed on his bared, wet valve. He wondered about the answer to that question himself. He had - foolishly - taken Tarn to his berth a few times, hoping it might sate that constant hero-worship that seemed to taint their every interaction. It had only made things worse. Tarn had taken a few frags to mean he now had exclusive access to Megatron’s berth, which he certainly did not. Poor Starscream had nearly had his optics clawed out and Tarn had certainly never forgiven him, though of course he laid the blame entirely at Starscream’s pedes and none at Megatron’s. 

Not that his relationship with Starscream had been a healthy one either, not since the very earliest days of the war. 

There was so much he regretted. So much he wished he could take back. 

Tarn walked forwards, and ran his fingers over the margin of Megatron’s valve, briefly circling his anterior node. Megatron suppressed the instinctive jerk of movement the contact elicited. Tarn’s digits slid inside, fingering the abused mesh, stretching the callipers beneath. For a moment he flicked his claws out and dug them in - Megatron went rigid in pain. He would not cry out. 

“There’s a wonderful symmetry in defiling a mech both metaphorically and by making such a mess of them,” Tarn said, pulling his servo back and gesturing to the stained and filthy state of Megatron’s plating. “On the other servo, I would rather frag him while he’s  _ clean _ .” 

_They’re_ _talking about you like you aren’t even here_ , Megatron thought to himself. Did he want to speak up and shift their attention to him as something other than a berth-toy? If so, what did he actually intent to _say_ to Tarn? There was no outcome for that conversation that made things any better for him. 

“So fastidious,” Overlord said, slightly mocking, but he rolled off the berth anyway and dragged Megatron up with him, removing his chains from their maglock to the berthframe. Megatron managed to balance on his one functional leg only by leaning against Overlord. “A brief detour to the washracks then.” 

Megatron was pushed next door, hopping in an undignified fashion, before Overlord yanked the chain attached to his collar and pulled him off balance. He crashed to the floor, to a pleased laugh from Overlord. There was the noise of levers being turned, and a sudden stream of cold solvent sheeted down over him. 

It was shocking at first with the sudden change in temperature, but Megatron adapted to it rapidly. He usually cleaned himself with cool solvent anyway to save energy, an old war habit, heating the liquid only when stubborn grime required it. He clamped his vent covers shut and did his best to enjoy the solvent washing over him. Overlord directed the spray over his plating, angling it to get into those hard to reach places. Megatron wasn’t able to scrub at himself in any way, but he didn’t imagine Overlord was being so thorough for  _ his _ benefit, only Tarn’s. 

Once most of him was reasonably clean, Overlord grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed his backstrut against the wall. “Spread your legs,” Overlord told him. 

“Do you intend to rape me in here?” Megatron asked, glaring up at the two mechs sharing the washracks with him. Helpfully the room was bigger than average so that Tarn hadn’t needed to stand outside, but even so it was a tight fit. 

“We want every part of you clean don’t we?” Overlord said, smirking. 

Shifting slightly in place, Megatron could feel the stickiness between his thighs still present, feel the congealed mass of mingled fluids still present inside his valve. The idea of being able to have that washed  _ out _ of him was a sudden desperate  _ need _ . He let his thighs fall apart. 

Overlord knelt down and spread the lips of Megatron’s valve apart. He had a handheld solvent attachment in his other servo, and he directed the stream of it at an angle calculated to shoot almost directly into that channel. 

Megatron hadn’t been expecting the pain, and so couldn’t stop himself from crying out in time. It  _ burned _ . Instinctively he tried to slam his legs shut but Overlord was there holding them apart. “And here I thought you would  _ want _ to be clean,” he said. 

“Frag you,” Megatron said before he could think better of it. Overlord put a finger under his chin to tilt his helm up. 

“You did, remember,” he said, “but we have better things to do than discuss shared history.” He kept the stream steady and didn’t let Megatron move until he was satisfied. Megatron put his helm back down and took it, clenching his jaw and watching the pool of solvent beneath him gradually start to run clean. 

Overlord turned the solvent off and pulled Megatron back onto his pedes. “The berth?” he asked Tarn, “or do you actually want him here?”

“The berth is fine,” Tarn replied. 

Once more Megatron found himself chained up, lying on his backstrut with his arms beneath him, adding even more pressure to his protesting shoulder joints. Overlord looped the chain shorter this time, giving him very little room to maneuver. Then he took a step back and gestured expansively to Tarn. “All yours.”

Tarn didn’t hesitate. Obviously he had been given plenty of time to consider his options. He hooked his claws into the vents either side of Megatron’s abdomen and pulled him down the berth so that his pelvis sat just at the edge of it, the chain stretched to its limit. He stepped between Megatron’s legs, fans rumbling at a low pitch against a gradual building heat. He put a servo over the Autobot brand on Megatron’s chest, visible once more now that the soil obscuring it had been washed away. 

“Well traitor?” Tarn asked. “Regretting your betrayal yet?”

Although the question was no doubt rhetorical, Megatron gave it serious consideration anyway. Since his trial, since joining the  _ Lost Light _ , had he done anything that he would regret? Would he change his actions in any way, knowing the eventual outcome? 

No. For all the horrific position he was in now, up until the mutiny he had been… better. A better mech than he had been. Trying to do good in the galaxy, perhaps doing something to make up for four million years of war which was not a debt of death that could ever truly be repaid, but… Any drop of happiness, of justice, that came from his servos was better than the alternative. Could he have done it without renouncing the Decepticons? No. If he had gone with his would-be rescuers at the trial it would have trapped him in the same old patterns, his warriors looking up at him to bring them to the victory over the Autobots he had always promised with no thought to the goals that had once been the reason for the movement… 

As for the mutiny itself, nothing he could have done would have changed that. It had not been based on the mech he was becoming, but on the tyrant he had been. If they could not be at peace with his presence… 

Tarn dug claws into the red emblem and carved through it. He wasn’t trying to tear it off, but merely mark it. “I will never understand why you turned against us,” he said. “I have no  _ wish _ to understand the reasoning of traitors. Yet there must be something that made you bow the knee before a Prime.”

“My choice had very little to do with Optimus,” Megatron said. It would do no good to point out that Optimus had renounced the Primacy, particularly since he acted like he hadn’t most of the time. 

“Really?” Tarn sneered. He shifted his weight back, and slowly knelt down at the end of the berth. His claws ran delicately over Megatron’s bared array. “How did you persuade the Autobots to make you  _ Captain _ of a ship? What was the proof of your loyalty to them, when you had already turned traitor once? Perhaps this newfound weakness of yours comes from spreading your legs and letting the Prime have  _ this _ .” He tapped over the entrance to Megatron’s valve. 

“You really are letting your imagination get away with you Tarn,” Megatron said, not particularly impressed with this line of reasoning. He could have pointed out that when Overlord had taken him for the first time he had still been sealed, but there was little point. This wasn’t about reality, it was about insinuation, suggested submission, perhaps even some left-over, twisted jealousy. 

“The old Megatron would never have allowed himself to be in this position,” Tarn said. “The new Megatron… perhaps you’ll get wet for anybody now.”

Yes, Megatron had rather suspected it might be this sort of play. Fine. Tarn would have his fun with or without any kind of input from him. 

Tarn slid off his mask. The old scar, untended and too much for self-repair, stood out over the side of his faceplates. Megatron remembered giving it to him, before the mask, for some transgression he couldn’t even recall the details of now. Damus had refused to see the medics, intending to wear his shame for all to see. He would have continued to do so forever until Megatron gave him the idea of the mask, mostly because it had become almost embarrassing having to look at Damus wearing the injury proudly across the campaign table. 

The mask was more Tarn’s true face now than what lay beneath. 

It was just another piece of history, another moment of unjustified violence that had felt normal and natural at the time. Megatron did not believe in Primus, but if the deity did exist then this whole scenario was surely nothing other than some cosmic justice for his many sins. 

Tarn bent over Megatron’s array, and his glossae lapped gently over his anterior node. Sore as he was, it took a few moments for Megatron’s frame to start to respond. Then, maddeningly, he started to feel the first slight tingle of charge. Tarn was as good at this as he was at sucking spike, the latter of which Megatron could attest from previous experience, and he teased and toyed with unpredictable vagaries of heat and pressure that lit up circuitry which had been long-neglected in this frame. Megatron tried to ignore the slow roil of pleasure. He had been expecting this to come at some point, particularly after Overlord’s comment about enjoying such false complicity in one’s own rape, but knowing did not make it any easier. 

He had prior experience in the intimate ways a mech’s frame could betray them though. The arena had not broken him, and nor would this. He would survive now in the same way. 

As the charge Tarn was building in him grew, Megatron felt distantly that his spike was starting to pressurise, the basal, instinctive coding of interface protocols bypassing any request for, or denial of, his permission. As it slid free from its housing, Tarn stopped what he was doing. Megatron could think more clearly with the stimulus gone - he had been starting to slide into that hazy place of not-quite reality where his processor and his frame no longer seemed to be attached. 

“Wet enough,” Tarn purred, and Megatron found himself being rolled onto his front in a jingling of chains. The berth was an awkward height - too high to be kneeling, too short to plant his pedes properly on the floor. Tarn kicked his legs apart, then after a moment, lifted his injured leg up to rest it not-quite-kneeling on the berth. Not an easy position to hold, but Tarn kept him pinned in place there. His spike nudged against Megatron’s array, rubbing along the length of it, teasing his node and bumping against the bottom of his own spike. 

He was very familiar with Tarn’s array. He could visualise the other mech’s spike easily, with its purple biolights and rippled ridges. Tarn had enjoyed modding it, more for the look of the thing, since back then the thought of Megatron letting Tarn frag him had been unthinkable for all those old, bad reasons of rank and discipline. Now he would find out what those mods actually felt like. 

Tarn slowly pressed in. Pain was inevitable given the injured state of Megatron’s valve, but his lubricant was flowing freely now and his callipers were relaxed, shifting easily. Tarn sheathed himself with a purr of pleasure, and began a slow and steady pace, a mockery of gentleness. His spike lit up internal nodes which had survived the damage Overlord had dealt him and waves of pleasure began to push aside the aches and pains of his battered frame. 

It was, in an old way, almost familiar. 

“You like this, don’t you,” Tarn whispered to him. “But what else can anyone expect from traitors? You have lost all honour.” 

Megatron ignored him. Tarn’s words were meaningless taunts. Tarn’s servo caressed the plating of his hips, then ran down below his abdomen to his array, to his now fully pressurised spike. Tarn’s digits were gentle, claws retracted again, a slow drag of stimulation in time to his movement in Megatron’s valve. 

It was just as unpleasant as it always had been, to feel the revulsion in his spark warring against the charge in his frame. He hated it, pushed his processor away from it. It was a retreat from reality, but so be it. The distance was necessary, cutting himself off from the pleasure and letting it happen to a him that was not him. 

Tarn’s voice dissolved into static, rising and falling but the words themselves no longer accessible to his processor. His thoughts were slow and sluggish. What was happening to his frame was there, but far away. 

It was too much like the arena. The distant pleasure and the echo of pain, the tightness around his spike. He could see the gravel and the limp frame of some defeated gladiator in front of him, held down by him, distant white noise of the crowd a faint roar in his audials. Trying so hard to push away the room he was in and what Tarn was doing to him, there was nothing he could use to distract himself from the memory file playing at full resolution in front of his optics. Nothing to focus on instead of it - nothing he  _ wanted _ to focus on. 

All Megatron could do was relive the scene in a haze as his charge built and built and his distant frame finally overloaded in a wave of bliss that failed to touch him at all. 

In the memory, he left his opponent lying on the arena floor and walked away. He felt his frame twitch with dissonance, as he both could and could not move. A familiar voice was talking to him, somewhere far away. 

Megatron rose - or fell - or came back into himself. His frame was once again solid and present around him. Overlord was speaking, a familiar smugness that did not fit with the arena, because he had not talked much in their matches back then. 

“Keep pretending not to be affected,” Overlord said to him - his servo was petting Megatron’s helm. “You aren’t convincing anyone, except perhaps yourself.”

Was  _ that _ what Overlord thought he had just been doing? Megatron supposed it was one way of looking at this technique of ‘going away’ - he did not know it there was a better term for it. Although that intense presence of a memory file was not what usually happened. That had been new, and not at all pleasant. 

“That was certainly pleasing,” Tarn said. “But I have to wonder, what next? I can imagine all kinds of tortures…”

“If I want your ongoing assistance, I shall ask for it,” Overlord told him, with an edge of menace. “He is still  _ my _ prize Tarn, not yours.”

“Fine,” Tarn growled, after a moment. “I’ll leave you to your  _ fun _ then.”


	8. Third of Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, the arena calls.

With the cost of the dead gladiator recouped, his master seemed to feel that his punishment had been sufficient. There was no further mention of spreading his legs for noble mechs, although Overlord refused to be  _ thankful  _ to Indirius for that. He had accepted it as the better of two punishments, and while it had been unpleasant, overall the mockery of submission had been bearable compared to the alternative. If Indirius had continued to push the matter however, then he would have had to remind him of all the very good reasons this had never happened before now, namely that his master would not be making any shanix at all if Overlord got himself executed for murdering a high-caste mech.

He returned to the simplicity of the arena, and once again with the passage of time a sense of normality reasserted itself. No other mechs tried to taunt him in the arena with mentions of Megatron. No other mechs came even close to defeating him. The arena was his home and his comfort, and he was the one in control. Here in Stanix at any rate. He did not think on other cities. 

Overlord could not stop himself from thinking of Megatron entirely, but he was not pushing Powercore for a rematch this time and so he hoped there would be at least a few vorn before they faced each other again. Time to prepare himself. Time to plan. When he knew when it would be and under what circumstances, then he could start to run the simulations over and over again, but it was not as if doing so had helped him triumph the last time. 

Megatron was… hard to predict. 

Despite that, and despite the steady peace of simple, easy violence and victory, Overlord could not control his dreams. They were not always about Megatron - that would have simply been  _ unbearable  _ \- but he appeared in them too often to please him. They were generally about defeat. Reliving the two times that he had been forced to submit - only now with the full weight of Megatron’s attention upon him. That - being  _ noticed _ , feeling that the victory was actually something Megatron  _ cared _ about and had put his spark into - seemed to… to be better than what had actually happened. On a few scattered occasions Overlord was not in the arena at all, but up in Cadminus’ box above it all, laying himself out posed like a plaything for hungry optics - but  _ Megatron’s  _ optics, not the noble’s. 

Each time the dreams came, Overlord woke from them with little ripples of charge running through his circuitry. He always got charged when fighting though, to the death or to the domination, and from these two experiences with Megatron it seemed his frame at least was not affected by the thought that he might lose. It knew what to expect, habit long ingrained in it after more than a millennia of victory. Surely that was the cause, and nothing more. 

It was not - could not be - the submission. He had submitted - albeit a mockery of  _ true _ submission - for Cadminus and felt not even the slightest ghost of charge running through him. It was only ever in the arena, and in his dreams, that his charge was roused. 

Overlord did not spend a lot of time thinking deeply about this. 

Eventually though, the crowds began to tire once more of the same old fights, seeing either the same gladiators losing once again to Overlord, or up-and-comers meet their oh-so-tragic end against him. Even imported beasts from across the wide span of the galaxy could not entirely entertain them. Talk in the ‘net forums began to be of Megatron, of seeing this match-up again, of whether this time could be the one that Overlord bested him. 

Yes. It had been long enough. Overlord could pull together his confidence, boosted once again by a long string of triumphs, and start to consider the problem of Megatron again. He spoke to Powercore, who spoke to Brickbat. It all seemed to come together very fast - well. Perhaps Brickbat had been waiting to hear from them. 

This third match was weapons-limited, which was a means of encouraging creativity by removing options. Overlord did not mind the idea in principle, but given the degree of adaptability and planning Megatron had shown himself capable of thus far, he could not deny a degree of concern. On the other servo, the weapons they were to use were knives, which surely limited the amount of trickery possible. Knife-work was a matter of dexterity and skill, of weaving through the opponent’s defence, of being constantly aware of the position of your own frame and theirs in the close up work demanded. 

Overlord was slightly taller than Megatron, which meant greater reach. That was an advantage, at least in theory. He did not intend to count on it. 

This time Megatron came to Stanix to fight him. A change of audience, in theory, although mechs with money could afford to follow their champions wherever they might happen to be on the planet. They would cheer louder for Overlord than the Tarnish crowds, but Overlord did not rely on audience adulation to reinforce his will and drive to win. That came from him, his spark, always. He was wary of Megatron now, and would not think his victory assured, an inevitability of a correctly laid-out universe. 

He had to fight for this. Really  _ fight _ . 

When they strode out into the arena to face each other, Megatron’s expression was determined, but nothing more than that. Overlord saw no anticipation in him. No hunger. He grit his dentae and refused to let it bother him. 

They began slowly, feeling each other out. They had been through vorns of battles between now and the last time they had clashed, which meant repairs and replacements of parts, an infinitesimal alteration of weight and balance and style which had to be noted, analysed, and taken into account. The sharp edges of blades flickered through the air, testing defences, always ready to turn towards swift attack. 

Overlord was the first to draw energon, to his vicious satisfaction. He nicked between plating, a sharp splash of pink showing stark against Megatron’s grey colouring. Megatron himself barely reacted, though of course it was far from a severe injury. This type of fight was always a matter of stamina and victory at the cost of a thousand cuts. Megatron pressed an attack, bulling through Overlord’s defence at the cost of another two small injuries to bury his knife in one of Overlord’s vents. The blade stabbed through the angled plates, tearing through a filter and into the fan beneath it. Megatron jerked it free in a spray of energon and fragments of filter. 

Overlord’s fan ground in its seating noisily. It was hard to say how severe the damage might be. Overlord shunted the cooling demand to his other vents. He was a military build - he had more than enough back-ups. The more pressing concern was whether that had been an opportunistic target, or whether Megatron intended to go for his cooling system more generally, wear him down via overheating. 

A reasonable tactic. He did not intend to allow it. 

He focused on his defence. Megatron’s attacks lacked any clear pattern, arrhythmic and random, taxing any attempt at predictive analysis. Most he could deflect, but some got through - thought not without being returned. Perhaps the vents were too obvious a plan, merely another feint, for Megatron no longer seemed to be aiming for them in particular. 

Again the back and forth. Again the dance, tearing at plating, tiny wounds building up as their fans roared and the energon rolled down them in trickles and waves. Megatron went for a gap in the plating at his elbow and Overlord began to block - Megatron flipped the knife over in his servo and drove back towards his chest and a second vent. Overlord bared his dentae as it sank in deep again, fan roaring and scraping against the intrusion before cutting out with a high-pitched whine.  _ 70% efficiency _ , his systems told him, pushing his remaining fans harder to compensate. His plating flared out, trying to dissipate some heat in the gaps between, but opening up weaknesses for Megatron to exploit. 

Megatron was wounded too, of course, but none of the scattered cuts Overlord had carved into plating and energon lines beneath was enough to impair him to any significant degree. He had to try harder,  _ fight _ harder! He could not let this happen again! He would not lose again!

Megatron backed off slightly, the knife in his servo a glistening shard of silver. His optics darted over Overlord’s frame looking for an opening. Overlord didn’t allow him the space to see one, going on the offensive. He could not allow hesitation even though that might be better called caution. If he waited he risked heat build-up he could not fully dissipate and that would surely spell defeat. He wove a pattern of sharp, chopping strikes, leveraging his strength. Megatron fell back from him, arms held in close, parrying with that surprising speed he had for his frametype. Even so Overlord caught him a glancing blow just below his helm, slicing through the side of his neck. He roared in triumph, but it had only nicked the main line not severed it as he’d hoped. 

Megatron ducked below his arm just pulling back from the strike and there was a sharp pain just to the right of his backstrut. The knife slipped between his flaring plating and hit... something. Sensory and motor relays scattered across the lower part of his frame went suddenly offline. No longer responding to his commands, his legs went out from under him. 

No!  _ No! _ Overlord clawed at the gravel beneath him trying to force himself to rise, but his limbs would do no more than twitch. Scattered signals, chaotic and fragmentary, were all that reached his processor. He was… down. Defenceless. 

The crowd roared. A familiar refrain. 

Overlord briefly shuttered his optics. He could not even turn over, face his foe. How had Megatron known where to strike to do such damage? Had it been planned? Surely,  _ surely _ it could not have been. Just some monstrous feat of Primus’ own luck...

Megatron kicked his legs apart, knelt down behind him. The sensation was muted, half there and half numb. It was disorienting, having both a presence of and lack of neural feedback. Megatron pried his modesty panel off with a brief flare of half-there pain, and pushed in. 

Overlord pressed his helm against the rough gravel of the arena floor. He could not feel Megatron’s servos on him, just the rough burn of the spike in his valve.  _ Was _ Megatron even touching him? Or had his disdain spread so far now that he did not even want to touch him more than he had to to take his pleasure from him? What would Overlord see on his faceplates if he had managed to turn? Still that same cold, disinterested look? 

Not being able to see was somehow worse than seeing it. 

Megatron kept on fragging him, rough powerful thrusts, until he finally overloaded. Camera drones buzzed nearby. Then he was gone, leaving Overlord helpless in front of the crowds. 

Someone would be along to drag him inside eventually. Until then he had to lie here burning with humiliation. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pain, repair, repeat.

Tarn left the room. Megatron still felt odd, not quite himself. Surety and calmness had been in short supply for the last few cycles. Tarn had overloaded inside him and the mix of transfluid and lubricant was no more pleasant under the circumstances than it had been mixed with his own energon. As the door slid shut, Overlord looked down at him with a smile. 

“It’s some way to Deathsaurus’ warworld,” he said. “I have absolutely nothing else to do with my time apart from spend it with you.” 

Megatron felt his spark waver, for all that he tried to steel himself against it. This had been bad enough already. Yet there was some slight relief in knowing their current destination.

“I promised you pain, didn’t I.” Overlord loosened his chains again and pulled him off the berth so that he was kneeling on the floor. He fiddled with something behind Megatron’s back, and then there was a rush of relief in his shoulders as the stasis cuffs were removed. Grinding with stiff, stressed metal, his arms fell to his sides - he could not have managed to move them any further though even if he’d tried. His neural circuitry simply wasn’t responding. 

The relief didn’t last long. Overlord snapped one of the cuffs on his left wrist, and brought his servos around to the front to restrain them there instead. He unhooked the chain from Megatron’s collar, leaving it attached to the two cuffs, and reached up towards the ceiling. There was a support beam running the length of the room which didn’t quite meet the sheet-metal above it, and it was enough for Overlord to loop the chain around it. Megatron was pulled upwards, though not high enough to properly stand up. Overlord came around to stand in front of him again and pulled something from his subspace. 

“Do you remember these?” Overlord asked him, displaying it. It was a plasma-whip, that old favourite tool of overseers and arena-managers alike. Megatron scowled at the weapon. “I’ve had a lot of time to learn how to use these, over the vorns,” Overlord continued, caressing the whip, the corded length of metal that would buzz with cutting heat once activated. “They’re a bit more energetic than most methods of torture, but that’s what I like about them.”

Megatron said nothing. He had felt the bite of a plasma-whip before, though his masters had usually wanted him capable of functioning afterwards. He had no such guarantee with Overlord. 

Overlord clicked the weapon on. There was a hum rapidly ascending in pitch, and the length of the whip above the handle started to shine with heat and light. The metal glowed a dull red - it would heat quickly within the confines of a powerful electromagnetic field until the edges of it were incandescent white and had reached that deadly liminal state. “I wonder how much of this you can take,” Overlord said. “I don’t intend to kill you for a very long time, but I understand we have a very competent medic on board. I’m certain she’ll be happy to help me find your limits.”

He gave a lazy flick of his wrist. The tip of the whip snaked out and lashed over the Autobrand on Megatron’s chestplates in a hiss of burning metal. It wasn’t yet up to temperature, but his sensors lit up with a shock of pain anyway. Overlord gave him a moment for the sensation to peak then start to fade again before the next strike, across his abdomen this time. He kept up that pattern as the whip continued to heat up, little strokes across his arms, his thighs, his chestplates. Whenever the whip strayed particularly low Megatron tensed himself for the possibility that it might hit his array, knowing that would surely be an unparalleled agony, but Overlord was more careful than that. 

_ Why ruin what he still wants to get use out of _ , Megatron thought to himself bitterly. 

The plasma whip was glowing blue-white now, cutting ever deeper into his plating. Overlord strolled round to stand behind him. There was a moment of silence broken only by the humming noise the whip was making, and then a sharp crack as Overlord brought it down for the first time with full force. 

Megatron came very close to screaming - but he managed to suppress it. The whip stuck in place for a moment burning, burning deeper into the thick, heavy armour plates of his back, before Overlord gave it a twitch and it pulled away. Damage warnings flared, pinging him with urgent messages. Battle programming tried to come online, but Megatron cut it off ruthlessly. Even if he had wanted violence there was no point. It wouldn’t help him, cuffed and restrained as he was. 

“I’m sure I can get some noise out of you eventually,” Overlord said. “Though don’t think that all you need to do is scream to satisfy me enough to stop.”

Megatron let himself sag from the chain suspending him. This was an endurance match, of will and of physicality. The only problem with thinking of it that way was that there was going to be no end to it. No point where if he just held out for long enough everything would stop. There would be breaks, periods of relief, but the torture and the rape would continue indefinitely. The only point to his stubborn refusal to give Overlord what he wanted was his own pride. 

But he had to have  _ something _ , didn’t he? The alternative - giving in, accepting defeat - was too terrible to contemplate. 

Overlord brought the whip down again. Another line of fire across his back, so hot it felt cold at the same time. Another. Another. His world became the pain. The damage warnings piled up and up in his processor until they finally gave up and just blared errors at him over and over again. His frame jerked with each impact and he tried to keep his dentae clenched and his vocaliser shut down, he tried… 

Eventually, he did scream. Eventually - as he knew very well - every mech screams. That is the nature of torture. 

It left him no less sick at spark to know that though. 

\----

Megatron came to in a medbay. He was lying on his front, arms stretched up over his helm. Everything hurt. He was unsure if he had been given a pain patch - if he was in a medbay, surely he would have been given a pain patch - but it certainly didn’t  _ feel _ like he had. 

“Look at this!” a high-pitched and very irritated voice said from close by. “What do you expect me to do with this mess?”

“Fix it, naturally.” Overlord. Megatron stiffened, tried to move, but the moment he did so agonising pain spread over the entirety of his backplates. He went limp again, his processor spinning. “You are a medic, aren’t you?”

“This isn’t a quick welding job,” the unfamiliar voice complained. “It’s a complete strip-and-replace of every bit of plating from his neck to his knees. Sure, I can do it, but not more than once or twice before I run out of parts. This is a spaceship, not a medcentre.”

Overlord vented, deep and theatrical. “Very well, I shall take more care in future,” he said. “There’s more than one way to skin a petrorabbit - or a warlord, as it might be.” 

“You better,” the apparent medic said, with a surprising lack of fear considering who they were talking to. “I don’t mind fixing him up in between his punishments, but I won’t have you blaming me when you do something I can’t fix.”

Overlord chuckled. “Always so bold,” he said. “Aren’t you afraid of me Nickel?” The glyph he had used for the name implied a femme - rare, but getting less so these days.

“Why should I be?” Nickel replied. “You need me.”

“For now.”

“Yeah, and maybe I’ll start being afraid of you when that time comes. Now, are you going to clear out and let me work, or stay and watch?”

“Will you let me if I promise not to get in your way?” Overlord asked, sounding slightly amused. 

A snort. “Fine.” 

There was the noise of mechs moving around. Megatron tried to turn his head to look, but the cable attachments in his upper back screamed at him. He was unsure exactly how much damage Overlord had done - his memory files were starting to compile again properly, and he remembered now what had happened. Better not to risk moving and making things worse. 

A cable prodded at the medical port in his side, an awkward fit until its owner transformed the tip of it slightly. An unusual configuration. Where had the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ picked this medic up? Medical override codes loaded up into his system, taking control of his neural circuitry. Megatron felt his motor relays shut down and was expecting the sensory relays to follow - a more complete if more intrusive method of pain management than applying a patch - but Nickel left them activated. Megatron tried to tense in sudden alarm, but… his frame was no longer responding. 

He was paralysed, ready for the medic to start working on him, but he would feel everything. Whatever oaths this Nickel had taken as part of her trade, they certainly weren’t the ones  _ he _ knew. Evidently she saw no problem with doing her patients harm. 

The medic got to work. She started to strip the damaged armour plates from Megatron’s back, making no particular attempt to be delicate. As much as the pain grew and grew, as delicate internal components were bared, as transformation joints were wrenched apart, as energon lines and neural wiring were clamped off, he could do nothing. He could not jerk away from the source of his agony. He could not as much as twitch. He tried to cry out, but even that possible release was denied him. His vocaliser cut off in the moment of activation.

There was something about the utter helplessness that felt particularly oppressive to his spark. The complete lack of control over his frame. At least when Overlord or Tarn had been holding him down there had been the  _ possibility _ of fighting… 

At some point he lost himself in the rise and fall of sensation. Motionless as he was, it was all he had left to focus on. It was something like hanging there being whipped had been, something his processor knew would have a discrete beginning and a discrete end if only he could hold on to himself, even if during it seemed like nothing more than a forever, endless, eternal now of pain… There would be other forms of pain, afterwards, but there would be an end to  _ this _ , there would be… 

It began to ebb, eventually. The crackling hiss of an arc-welder filtered through from his audials. He risked a diagnostic and found that the repairs were almost complete. His plating was settling into configuration, his systems adapting to the new components. His sensory network was integrating. The welds that were being set down were still lines of hot-cold unpleasantness, but it was… manageable. 

“While you’ve got him here,” the medic Nickel said, pitching her voice loud to be heard over the welder, “do you want me to take a look at his valve? I can’t imagine you’ve left  _ that _ in one piece.”

“Why not?” Overlord replied. “Though I’m just going to tear him open again.”

Nickel snorted. The noise of the welder stopped with a hiss, and Megatron felt the sensation of movement on his backplates as the minibot walked over his prone form. “You want him to catch a rust infection? Because that’s how you get rust infections.”

“Tarn would  _ certainly _ complain then,” Overlord said, sounding amused. 

The minibot jumped down between his legs, her pedes hitting the metal of the medical berth with a strangely rubbery sound. Moments later, tiny digits were feeling between his thighs, over the exterior of his array. His modesty panel certainly had  _ not _ been replaced. The lips of his valve were spread open and then the minibot put her entire servo inside him. He was still paralysed - there was nothing he could do about it. She had to be small even for a minibot, because it hardly hurt, but even so he could not see this as something merely clinical. 

There was a thoughtful noise. “Yeah… pretty nasty tear,” the medic said. “I can wire it shut though, with something strong enough to hold against you fragging him if you’re not  _ too _ violent about it. Self-repair should take care of it after that over the next deca-cycle or so.”

“So long?” Overlord asked, with a certain degree of irony. 

“Yes, I know you’ll be bringing him back long before then,” Nickel said, with a similar knowing tone. “So do what you want, frankly.”

There was a pause. Then Overlord said, “Well, as a reward for your hard work, you can frag him now if you’d like.”

Megatron tensed - or tried to. His motor circuitry was still shut down. He could only lie there, limp, helpless. “I’m sure you’d find any attempt by me hilarious given our size difference,” Nickel replied, sounding neither offended or interested, thank Primus. “But no, thank you. I like my mechs willing and enthusiastic.”

“Really?” Overlord sounded genuinely surprised, which Megatron could understand on, frankly, too many levels. “And you run with Tarn and his crowd anyway? No foolish little… moral compunctions?” 

Nickel laughed. “I know who they are and what they do. I’m not oblivious. And I get why your former leader has to suffer - I even agree with it! After Tarn explained the Decepticon Code to me... “ A brief moment of silence. Megatron wished he could see them, see their expressions, all the things that were not said out loud. “Lets just say I have good reasons for being a Decepticon. I have good reasons to hate organics - and Megatron was meant to be all about ending their threat to our species for good! Instead…” She kicked Megatron’s array with a pede that turned out to be a wheel, not hard enough to be anything more than mildly humiliating. “Instead he’s been helping them, just like the  _ Autobot  _ he’s become.”

“An ideologically motivated femme I see,” Overlord said. “Tarn must  _ love _ you.”

“We get along well,” Nickel replied. 

“Hmm. So, do your little bit of work to his valve. Then wake him up and the two of us can go back to having  _ fun _ .”

“He’s already awake,” Nickel said, with satisfaction. “He’s been awake the whole time. I’ve just overridden his motor functions - he can feel but not move.”

Overlord’s engine revved, sudden and hungry. “Is that so?” he purred. “That’s… very interesting.”

“Oh, you wanna frag him while he’s like this,” Nickel said, with the air of someone only just putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “I mean, let me get finished, and I can set the overrides to wear off slowly over the next few cycles. Can’t keep them on forever mind you, not without doing some irreparable damage I don’t think you’d find that enjoyable, but you can have some time to frag him. But  _ not _ in my medbay, you hear me!”

“I can wait,” Overlord said. His cooling fans were rumbling. He sounded charged up and ready to go. 

Megatron tried to shut his optics, but he couldn’t even do that. He could only stare at the medical berth he was lying on while Nickel shoved her servos in his valve again and wove the wire through his delicate internal mesh in sharp, tugging pricks of upsetting discomfort. He had thought he was coping, accepting the rapes, preparing himself for those that were yet to come. He hadn’t believed Overlord could surprise him. Taking him like this though… the idea of it shouldn’t have been so distressing. Yet maybe some part of him had been consoling himself with the idea that if he chose, if it ever  _ really _ got too much, he  _ could _ fight them. 

Break his vow, yes. Turn against principle, and that  _ would _ be losing in some fashion, admitting that Overlord was enough to make him bend and break, but if he had to do so then it seemed the better option than shattering into nothing more than some trained berth-toy.

It was part fantasy anyway - he wouldn’t win, not with Tarn and Deathsaurus and all of their followers on board. Not unless he drew on a power he couldn’t control that would kill even those mechs on the  _ Tyranny _ that had nothing to do with his rape, that didn’t deserve to die… 

Assuming he could even touch the black hole. Assuming the event horizon even worked like he thought - hoped - it might. 

Maybe the reason he hadn’t tried so far wasn’t because of his vow of pacifism but because he couldn’t face the thought that it might fail? Because he couldn’t face the utter powerlessness that would come if that happened? 

“All done,” Nickel said. There was a hum of energy, and restraints Megatron had been barely aware of retracted into the berth. Insurance, he assumed, for the time before she had immobilised him. He felt Overlord’s large, rough servos on him, picking him up, slinging him over his shoulder. 

He had a brief view of the medbay as he was carried off. He saw the pile of mangled armour that had been his back, before the repairs, stacked in a heap of parts nearby. A beastformer was packing it away - one of Deathsaurus’, no doubt - and he looked around just in time to catch Megatron’s optics. 

The look he gave him was plaintive, apologetic. As though he wished they were both very far away from here. 

No. That mech had done nothing but follow where his commander had led. Megatron had no right to do something which might also end  _ his _ life, and to do what? Save one old tyrant who had only ever made the universe a worse place by being in it?

After the warworld. When he had only Overlord and the DJD left to deal with. Then. Then he would try, and let his spark and processor finally break if he didn’t succeed. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most intimate of violations.

Overlord dumped him on the berth back in his room and stood looking down at Megatron’s sprawled frame with a smirk, evidently deeply pleased. There had been no other sign of life on the walk back from medbay. Deathsaurus’ soldiers must be wisely steering well clear of this whole situation. Megatron did his best to express his anger and contempt with only his optics, still utterly unable to move. After a few moments, Overlord reached up over him and released the stasis cuffs. He twirled them around one digit as he straightened up again. 

“This… this is simply  _ wonderful _ ,” he said. “It amazes me that I was unaware medics could do this up until now. Too many scruples amongst them even in our own ranks, I suppose.” He tossed the cuffs to one side, and shifted onto the berth, straddling Megatron’s pelvis, a heavy weight that he could feel but do nothing about. The heat behind Overlord’s panel radiated, warming his own array. He  _ wanted _ to squirm, try and knock Overlord off-balance and  _ off _ of him. The signals fired in his processor… and went nowhere. 

“You’re utterly aware in there aren’t you,” Overlord said, tapping a digit against one of Megatron’s optics with an unpleasant little ‘tink’. Even the reflex that should have shuttered against potential damage to such a delicate sensor was offline. “Utterly aware, and utterly helpless. I’ve experimented with drugging mechs in the past, but it’s not much fun if they don’t really know what’s happening to them. This is better.”

He leaned in slightly, dragged his servos over Megatron’s battered chestplates. Those had not been damaged quite as badly by the plasma whip and thus had not required repair. The scars of the heat remained. “Medics must have so many little secrets,” Overlord continued. “I should make it a point to learn them. I can keep a mech alive if I have to. Garrus-9 forced me to learn that, or spoil my own fun. Yet if I could put mechs together as easily as I can tear them apart…”

Megatron had wanted to be a medic, once. Hearing Overlord speak like this, the idea that he might want to learn to save lives only because it would help him to ruin them, was abhorrent. It was a mockery of all his old ambitions, although he didn’t think Overlord  _ knew  _ that, thankfully. He would only rub it in harder if he did. 

“Overrides must be a little like mnemosurgery, don’t you think?” Overlord said. His servo caressed Megatron’s neck, fingers slipping around to massage lightly over the area just below his helm, above the stasis collar. Panic started to rise, uncontrollable. His vents came ever so slightly faster, fuel-pump working harder to compensate. Overlord pressed in, though not with his claws extended thank Primus. “I was taught a little about mnemosurgery, you know. Of course you do. You found out and put a stop to it.” Were there needles, digging in? Megatron could no longer be sure. He could barely think. All of his attention was focused on those four points at the back of his neck. 

Overlord let go. Megatron felt his spark shudder with relief. 

“I’m not sure exactly  _ what _ I would do to you if I could rewrite your mind,” Overlord said, looking down at his own servo. “It might take something away from the sense of victory.” He shrugged. “Thoughts for another time.” Again that horrid smile, promising pain to come. “Listen to me talk. I’m wasting time with this  _ gift _ Nickel has given me!”

Good! Waste away! Megatron was very aware of the fact that he was no longer shackled, although the stasis collar was still there as a heavy, dangerous band around his neck. Nickel had warned the motor shutdown was not permanent. There was a chance… 

Overlord’s servos went to his chestplates again. The claws slid out, digging in between the plates, and he  _ pulled _ . It was enough force to jerk Megatron’s frame up off the berth. His spark thrummed faster in its casing as he realised what Overlord was trying to do.  _ Stop _ , he wanted to say, too close to begging for comfort.  _ Stop, please…  _ Overlord pulled harder. With a grinding noise, the plates slid apart, baring his internals. Overlord let go, and Megatron’s backstrut hit the berth again with a dull thud that jarred his new components. 

“Are you hoping I might kill you doing this, I wonder?” Overlord said. “True, it’s easy to snuff a spark if you don’t know what you’re doing, or if a mech  _ moves _ too much. We don’t have either of  _ those _ little problems to worry about though, do we?”

He reached in, claws spread, and raked with a delicate touch over the exterior of Megatron’s sparkchamber, over the spiral of metal that formed the closed protective iris on the anterior surface. His sensory net tingled, uncertain how to categorise the sensation. He had not been touched  _ there _ in… when  _ had _ it last been that he had bared his spark to anyone? 

To Terminus, in the mines? 

Had there really been no-one since, not a single one of his followers he had trusted enough…? Wait, that was not entirely true. He had bound himself to Soundwave as Amica, but as for baring his spark during interface… No. No, he had not. 

Overlord’s claws dug into the iris. “You can’t even open this can you?” he said. “Or close it. You can’t move the smallest joint or gear right now.” His smile was all terrible hunger. Gradually he began to lever the petals open. There was a deep aching pain as the locking mechanism broke, and green light began to filter out, playing over Overlord’s plating. Finally the tension holding the iris closed gave way, and Megatron’s spark was fully exposed. 

“We match, you and I,” Overlord said, running a single digit gently over the outer corona of energy. The sensation was electric, a bolt of something near undefinable that shot through the core of him and spread out to tingle throughout Megatron’s frame. He would have cried out, if he had been able. “Both special. The chosen few, selected by Primus, as the priests would have us believe. Somehow I doubt we make for very good evidence of  _ that _ argument.”

_ This is not for you _ , Megatron wanted to say.  _ You can’t have this! _ But even if he had been able to speak his protests would have done nothing but give Overlord greater pleasure. 

Overlord’s digits sank in deeper, keeping his touch gentle. Megatron’s system couldn’t decide if it was pleasure or pain. Deep subroutines pinged him for some kind of external cue, found no hint of arousal or charge, found the fading aches of his injuries, and made their inferrance. 

Pain. The stimulus settled as pain. 

Megatron felt his whole frame wanting to tear itself away from Overlord’s touch, a spark-deep sense of  _ revulsion.  _ There was something so much more intimate about this sort of agony. There was no hiding from it. No distancing himself from it. He ached, he wanted to purge, he wanted to transform and hide away in his alt-mode as though that would even  _ do _ anything… And yet for all of this he still lay there, motionless. Overlord was bent low over him, watching his optics with glee. 

“You have no idea how you look like this,” Overlord whispered. “I must find some way of rewarding Nickel for making this possible.”

He wasn’t going to be satisfied with having his spark just this once, Megatron realised, with another stab of nausea. Now that he knew this was possible… 

Overlord’s servo was pushed deep inside his sparkchamber now, playing with the deepest curls and waves of glowing green light. Every part of Megatron’s frame wanted to split apart in his desperation to move  _ away _ from what was being done to him. The pain was so overwhelming he almost disregarded the sudden click in the air between them. Then Overlord tilted his helm upwards for him, directing Megatron’s optics to the place where Overlord’s chestplates were now splitting apart, baring his own sparkchamber. 

Megatron’s processor stalled out. Was Overlord really going to… to merge with him? 

He was dimly aware that sparkrape did happen, but it wasn’t common for several reasons. One of those was that as Overlord had said, opening the sparkchamber of an unwilling mech could easily lead to snuffing that spark. The other was that sensation and emotion and thought was shared in a merge and few rapists actually  _ wanted _ to feel what was happening to their victims so intimately.

But this was Overlord. Of course he would push even as far as this. Of course he would not fear the reflection of pain. 

Overlord leaned in, his forearms resting either side of Megatron’s helm. He kept their optics locked as he brought their bright green sparks closer and closer, until their outer coronas began to reach for each other, to brush together and mingle their energies. It was simultaneously like and  _ nothing like _ the spark-written memories Megatron had of the last time he had done this. 

Terminus’ spark had been soft blue-white, calming, gentle. It had been as steady and solid as he was. Megatron’s own brilliant green spark had almost overwhelmed Terminus the first time they merged, until he learned to control the energy that was transferred between them. At least Terminus had found it exhilarating rather than off-putting. This - Overlord’s equally powerful spark meeting his - was… turmoil. Disorientating flashes of emotion and sensation and imagery passed between them. 

Megatron did his best to stand against the storm, to win back some kind of control. He could feel Overlord doing the same, the two of them pushing against each other in a battle of willpower. Megatron was still wracked by the deep pain in his spark and frame though, and that had barely begun to touch Overlord. He was all sick, hungry pleasure that Megatron could just start to feel in echo. 

The merge completed. Overlord was inside his systems, inside his  _ self _ . Megatron could sense him picking over the events of the last megacycle, feeling the ghost of Megatron’s horror and agony and humiliation and  _ enjoying _ them. He could feel Overlord’s satisfaction, particularly in the knowledge of how deeply he and Tarn had affected Megatron. None of Megatron’s efforts to hide the memories or emotions from him was successful. In return Overlord pushed images at him - Megatron’s frame seen from the outside, spread open, valve dripping with fluids. Trembling under Tarn’s ministrations. Twitching and screaming beneath the blows of the plasma-whip. 

There was no lying in a sparkmerge - although things could be omitted, or missed. Megatron could not hide his revolted reaction to what Overlord was showing him, or miss how Overlord enjoyed getting that reaction out of him. Nor could he hide from the deep sense of something nearing  _ bliss _ that Overlord was experiencing having finally triumphed over him, having him in berth, this sense of finally  _ winning _ . He touched, just lightly, a great dark well of everything Overlord felt about him, accreted over millions of years since they had first met in the arena. 

Megatron had only brushed against it but even so it almost swallowed him. It was a roaring emptiness, a maelstrom of hunger, hate, love, desire, need... It was something he didn’t  _ want _ to understand. 

Overlord kept pushing with his spark, sending waves of energy through Megatron’s frame, controlling the merge. He ecstasy was a burning heat that Megatron felt second-hand but no less real, and it disgusted him. He felt open, plundered, torn apart - and Overlord could sense every bit of it, which was perhaps the worst part. It seemed to go on and on without end. He was lost in a wave of horrible, glorious stimulus. 

Eventually he felt Overlord’s charge building from along that tenuous connection still tying them to their frames. At some point which he had not even been aware of, Overlord had opened his panel and started fragging himself against Megatron’s plating, too distracted by the merge to change position enough to get at Megatron’s valve. When he overloaded, little bolts of electricity crackled between them along with the spurt of transfluid, marking Megatron yet again. 

Megatron was forced to feel every moment of that overload projected into his systems. 

Then, gradually, the sparkmerge started to separate. Overlord’s overbearing presence began to drift away. Their sparks drew back into their sparkchambers, and Overlord sat up, letting out a deep blast of heated air from his vents. His sparkchamber irised shut, and his chestplates folded back into place. Megatron tried desperately to do the same, and felt a slight surge of hope when his motor relays twitched… but no more than that. If the paralysis was wearing off though… 

“Beautiful,” Overlord murmured, reaching in to play lightly with the outer edge of Megatron’s spark again. Megatron forced himself to stay still, pinging his digits to move on an astrosecond cycle. Soon, soon, please soon… Overlord was relaxed, worn out. He wasn’t fully paying attention. Megatron could withstand the pain of his open spark so long as it didn’t alert his captor to the fact that the motor override was starting to wear off. 

Finally Megatron felt his systems come fully back online. He moved immediately, slamming his sparkchamber and chestplates closed, rolling to shove Overlord off the berth and landing heavily on top of him. He caught sight of the surprise in Overlord’s optics before punching him square in the faceplates. He managed a few more blows before the stasis collar activated at Overlord’s wireless command. 

Megatron went stiff as the collar shunted electricity through his system and blew out his circuits. Overlord bucked his hips and threw him off him, laughing. 

“So there  _ is _ still some fire left in you!” he said, pushing himself upright. Megatron writhed in pain on the floor, trying to force himself to get up, to keep on fighting. He was injured and worn and underfuelled. He couldn’t push past what the collar was doing to him. 

Overlord grabbed him, hissing a little as some of the stasis field transferred onto him, and heaved Megatron back onto the berth. The cuffs were snapped back around Megatron’s wrists, and once again the strong, thick chain bound him. 

“A valiant attempt,” Overlord said. “Not quite enough, I’m afraid.” One optic was cracked, but otherwise there was little damage.

Megatron let his engine answer for him, a low and menacing growl. 

“I was considering getting you some fuel,” Overlord told him. “Now I think you can wait a little longer.” He shrugged, turned, and left Megatron lying there. 

The attempt at violence hadn’t helped him to feel much better. He still felt utterly hollow and exhausted. His spark hurt. 

What was he going to do? 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope is a poisonous promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a bit less free time to write at the moment so the next chapter might take a bit longer. On the other hand, this one is a long one, so...

Megatron woke up when the door slid open, coming to in a rush of frantic energy that only led to him tugging futilely against his chains, but the figure silhouetted against the light was not Overlord. It was shorter and lighter, and advanced into the room almost hesitantly. The mech was a beastformer, one of Deathsaurus’ soldiers, and vaguely familiar. It took a few astroseconds to place him as the one he had seen in Nickel’s medbay, cleaning up from his surgery. 

The Decepticon crept closer. He had an aerial alt-mode judging by the wings twitching on his back. He scanned the room as though Overlord might be waiting to jump out at him from the washracks, then noticed that Megatron was watching him. He startled. 

“Oh. You’re awake. That… that makes things easier,” he said, and scuttled over. 

“What are you doing in here?” Megatron asked, keeping his voice low. He did not trust whatever this was. Perhaps this ‘con might want to teach the fabled traitor Megatron a few lessons himself, or perhaps he intended to steal him from Overlord for all that was a  _ terrible _ idea, or perhaps this was no more than one of Overlord’s tricks to plant a sense of false hope. 

“My name is Razoraptor,” the mech said, immediately breaking one of the first rules of doing anything remotely illicit. “I’m here to… help.” 

“Help,” Megatron replied flatly. No, this did not seem remotely trustworthy. Decepticons did not  _ help _ prisoners, nor did they get squeamish about their treatment like Autobots did. There was something going on here that he could not see. 

“What’s being done to you… it isn’t right,” Razoraptor said, optics wide and pained. He was a good actor, Megatron would give him that. “I can’t just stand back and let it happen.” He produced something from his subspace - a little laser cutter - and bent to start working on Megatron’s collar. 

Megatron lay still, refusing to allow even the slightest trickle of hope to come into his spark. This was not real. It could not be real. If Razoraptor meant to break him out it was only to deliver him to some equally hellish torment at the servos of someone else - although the most likely candidate had to be Deathsaurus, who might at least give him the mercy of a quick death. Perhaps at least whoever it was wouldn’t touch his spark - what had been done to his frame seemed to pale now in comparison to the horror of  _ that _ experience. 

He could feel the heat of the laser cutter against the side of his neck, moving slowly downwards as it carved through the tough metal and circuitry of the stasis collar. The constant sense of leashed power that usually tickled against his plating was starting to fragment as the collar became more and more damaged. 

“Almost there,” Razoraptor said, and behind him the door slid open again. 

Razoraptor went very still. 

“Little  _ glitch _ ,” Overlord growled, engine roaring as combat subroutines came online. “Just  _ what _ do you think you’re  _ doing _ ?”

Before Razoraptor could move either to escape or defend himself Overlord was on him, grabbing him by his delicate wings and tossing him into the wall. A soldier Razoraptor might be, but he had clearly never fought someone like Overlord before. He did his best, but Overlord batted aside any attempt to claw at his optics or less armoured seams and kept up his steady work of beating the beastformer into a little pile of scrap on the floor. 

Overlord finally pinned the whimpering mech on his belly, and leaned in. “Who sent you?” he demanded. This whole thing almost certainly wasn’t a trick of  _ Overlord’s _ then. 

“No-one sent me,” Razoraptor screeched. Overlord ground his faceplates into the floor. 

“I don’t think I heard you quite correctly,” he said, the hot flare of his anger starting to settle into a cooler and far more dangerous burn. 

“I didn’t… I wasn’t sent by  _ anyone _ ,” Razoraptor said, voice warbling with pain and panic. “Please, I’m telling you the truth! I was acting alone!”

Overlord’s optics narrowed, far from convinced. “Then you’re a mech with ideas far above your station, aren’t you?” he said. “Sneaking in here to steal such a prize from your betters. Did you imagine you could hole him up in your room and play with him at your leisure on the off-shift?”

Razoraptor shook his helm frantically, as much as he could held down by Overlord’s weight. “No, no, that’s not what I wanted at all! I would never… I’m not a pit-damned  _ rapist _ like  _ you _ .”

Overlord laughed, a cruel sound. “Is this really some sort of…  _ moral _ campaign? You expect me to believe that you decided, all by yourself, to be the shining hero for the mech that betrayed the Decepticon cause?”

“I don’t expect you to understand it,” Razoraptor said, shifting in pain. “But yes. Even if he is Megatron, no mech deserves what you’re doing to him.”

“So what were you going to do if you got him free, precisely?” Overlord asked, now apparently merely amused. Megatron was having a difficult time believing what he was hearing himself, but Razoraptor spoke with such conviction that it was becoming hard to deny his words. 

“I… I’m not even sure,” Razoraptor admitted. “Take him to one of the escape pods, perhaps? Just… find some way to get him away from  _ you _ .”

“Hmm.” Overlord pulled the beastformer up off the floor, flipping him over to examine the expression on his faceplates. “Perhaps you are being truthful. I’m still not convinced Deathsaurus didn’t put the idea into your processor somehow, but if he had organised this then it would have been much more thought through. Instead I am presented with the fumblings of an idiot.” He dragged Razoraptor over towards the berth, claws dug deeply into his plating, and spent a moment examining the damage to the stasis collar around Megatron’s neck. 

“What… what are you going to do to me?” Razoraptor asked, optics wide and scared. 

“Didn’t you think about that before you tried to steal from me?” Overlord said, raising a brow-ridge. “Now now, little beastformer, take your punishment like a Decepticon.”

“Overlord.” Megatron spoke almost without thinking about it. He couldn’t look at the trembling mech in Overlord’s claws and not feel for him, the more so because Razoraptor appeared to have been genuinely trying to rescue him. He held no illusions that he could make Overlord do anything, but like this mech had, surely he had to  _ try _ . “Stop. Please.”

Overlord looked at him with curiosity. “What?”

Megatron reset his vocaliser. It was diffiuclt to keep calm with Overlord so close to him. His frame and spark remembered too well all that had been done to him. “Don’t torture him. Don’t rape him. Just… either let him go or kill him quickly. Don’t drag it out like this.”

Overlord cocked his helm and smiled. His claws squealed against Razoraptor’s plating. “What about your situation makes you imagine you have any control here?” he asked. 

“Absoluetly nothing,” Megatron replied, keepng his voice level. 

Overlord thought for long moments. Held in his grip Razoraptor trembled and looked up with hopeful optics - Megatron could have told him there was little point in trusting in hope. This wasn’t going to work. 

“What will you offer me?” Overlord asked. He was smiling again, relaxed, perfectly in control and holding all the cards. “What  _ precisely _ will you offer me, Megatron, for sparing this poor fool?”

Megatron shuttered his optics. As Overlord had said, he had nothing to bargain with. The fact that Overlord even appeared to be considering this was either more cruelty, or because he had something in his processor that was  _ worth _ showing mercy. “What do you want?” he asked. 

“What do I  _ want _ ,” Overlord repeated slowly. “I want what I’ve always wanted. You, submitting to me. More specifically, right _ now _ I want to frag you and I want you to enjoy it - or at least do your best job convincing me you’re enjoying it.” He smiled. “If I’m satisfied, I’ll even let the beastformer live. If not…” He raked claws over the front of Razoraptor’s chestplates. “If not, you’ll just have to live with the knowledge that you’re responsible for every little thing that I do to him.”

“You’ve already forced me to enjoy being raped,” Megatron pointed out. “Or at least, Tarn has.”

“I don’t mean just lie there and take the pleasure you’re given,” Overlord said, tutting. “I want you to beg for my spike like a piece of shareware, I want you to look like you  _ love _ everything I’m doing to you. I want you to… consent, I suppose.”

“That’s not how consent works,” Megatron felt compelled to say, although he didn’t know why he was bothering. Overlord’s ideas about interface were too warped.

“Are you going to agree?” Overlord asked. “Or do I have to tear the wings off this piece of trash first?”

Megatron balled his servos into fists, tightened them hard enough to make the joints within groan. The idea was sickening - but so was the alternative. “Very well,” he said, looking away. 

Overlord dropped Razoraptor in a clatter of metal and there was the hiss of moving chain. Megatron opened his optics to see that Overlord had unhooked the chain from his stasis cuffs and collar and had instead looped it beneath some of the beastformer’s torn plating. Razoraptor was leashed to the wall at the top end of the berth - there wasn’t enough slack for him to move any distance away. Once he was finished, Overlord gave a mocking caress to the top of Razoraptor’s helm. “I do hope you enjoy the show,” he said. 

Wisely, Razoraptor said nothing. 

Overlord unlocked the stasis cuffs from around Megatron’s wrists with a quick code-burst and stood up. “Well,” he said, raising one brow-ridge. “Get yourself wet for me.”

Megatron could hardly imagine how he was going to manage that. He had never felt less aroused. Still, if he wanted Razoraptor to live, he had to try. He let his legs fall apart, baring his array, and reached down with one servo to start circling his anterior node. Overlord’s engine gave a warm purr at the sight, and Megatron fought the instinctive wave of nausea the noise prompted in his already churning fuel-pump. He couldn’t simply… lie here and go into that far away state, not if Overlord wanted his active participation. Not that he  _ had _ to run from the pleasure yet; there wasn’t much of it to be derived from this dry stimulation, not with those heavy optics on him. 

“Come now Megatron,” Overlord said. “Don’t you ever self-service? Surely there are some personal little… scenarios you use to get your charge worked up and your lubricant flowing?”

“I thought you wanted my attention on you?” Megatron growled. He kept on caressing his node in the hope it might do something - he supposed there was an edge of pleasant warmth to it, but only barely and not enough to go anywhere. 

“There’s no point in your attention if we can’t even get this off the ground,” Overlord told him. “Close your optics for me. Imagine… whatever it is you imagine.”

Megatron vented out unhappily, but did as Overlord was asking. If this was what it had come to… If this was what  _ he _ had come to… 

It was difficult to put aside his knowledge of the room he was in, the berth he was lying on, the still-shaking beastformer crouched nearby, the monster watching him. He did his best to turn his processor to the task of finding something  _ enjoyable _ to think about. Overlord was right that he did have a few favoured fantasies that involved his valve getting a good and thorough fragging. They frequently weren’t about any bot in particular, just impressions of a heavy frame, big servos and a bigger spike, a gentle glossae mapping out the lines of his seams and perhaps lapping his node and his valve into sopping, dripping dampness or simply leaning over him and  _ taking _ … 

But as he thought of it the scene turned into Overlord’s frame over him, Overlord’s spike violating him, Tarn’s lips pressed against him… 

No. No. What little charge had begun to build started to fizzle away as his spark shuddered and revulsion pushed away arousal. 

Not that then. Something different, something else. 

If the impressionistic images were not going to work, then perhaps he had to think about one mech in particular. Perhaps memory would serve where imagination had not. The last time he had been free and happy to take a real spike had been in the mines. Summoning one of his many memory files of Terminus felt wrong though, as though Overlord could reach back through millions of years and sour even that. There had been others however, because monogamy had been something of an alien concept to them at least where spike-and-valve interface was concerned. 

Impactor? Megatron conjured that image in his processor; Impactor’s rough digits mapping out his plating, lingering over hazard markings, the rub against his node envisioned as Impactor’s glossae, a slow and teasing press… For a few semi-enjoyable moments it seemed to work. Megatron managed to lose himself in the fantasy and felt his charge building, felt a slick dampness between his thighs and against his fingers when he ran them down over the lips of his valve.

Then Impactor’s familiar smirk - he had always enjoyed his own ability to make mechs whine and moan in ecstasy - merged little by little with the one Overlord almost always wore and Megatron was pulled out of his thoughts once again with a jerk of panic. 

It was foolish and somewhat surreal to think it, because Megatron knew very well he was not getting out of this alive, but  _ Primus damn it _ if Overlord had utterly ruined big mechs for him now forever… 

Not Impactor then. Not Terminus. Not any of the other miners who had been brief and pleasant flings; Crusher, Loadlift, Steelplate… 

So then what? He cast his thoughts back over his time as warlord looking for anything that might work. Soundwave? No, he couldn’t think of his amica - well, former amica now - that way. Starscream? His engine gave a slight thrum of lust thinking about those slender wings, powerful thrusters, wicked smile… but he couldn’t imagine Starscream spiking him. Even outside the constraints their roles had placed on them if there was any mech primarily hungry for massive spikes it was Starscream. Shockwave? He supposed there was something appealing about his heavy chassis, an engine core powerful enough to supply the cannon of his arm… but then he would have to convince his processor to overlook the wreckage Shockwave had almost made of the  _ entire known universe _ in the apocalypse that had helped Megatron to see… 

Well. The mess they had all made of everything. 

The thought was maudlin. Not exactly right for getting charged up. 

Somewhere above him, Overlord vented out. “I appreciate a good tease as much as anyone, but the pace of this is geological.” 

“You’re rather spoiling the mood,” Megatron replied, not opening his optics. Glumly, he plunged a digit into his own valve, feeling a thin and insufficient layer of lubricant on the mesh, feeling - briefly, before he shied away from it - the lumpy ridge of wire where Nickel had sewn him back together. 

“Perhaps you need a little  _ assistance _ ,” Overlord suggested. There was a shift in the air and the hum of movement. Warm vents wafted over Megatron’s valve. Megatron knew exactly where Overlord was and he didn’t like it. “Just keep on pretending I’m someone else -  _ for now. _ ” Nor did he miss the deadly edge to  _ that _ . 

Megatron tipped his helm back and let Overlord push his servo away. Tried not to acknowledge  _ who _ was doing it when a glossae lapped at his opening. Yes. Pretend. He wasn’t going to be given that luxury forever, so he should take advantage of it while he could. 

Who… who was sufficiently unlike Overlord or Tarn that he could safely imagine them doing this, yet trustworthy enough that he could actually relax into the fantasy? None of the Phase Sixers. Not the Constructicons. Not any of Decepticon High Command as it had most recently existed. His processor groped around for anything that might fit. 

Deadlock’s faceplates surfaced at the front of his thoughts. The guise he had worn as a true Decepticon, not the more elegant recoloured version he’d adopted since Turmoil drove him away and he found religion. Deadlock had come to his berth eagerly in the past and he had always been loyal and trustworthy enough that he probably  _ wouldn’t _ have taken it the wrong way if Megatron had asked him to spike him. Before he deserted, but he wasn’t going to think about that. 

Yes. Deadlock. 

The glossae on his array was Deadlock’s. The digits starting to stretch out his valve and light up its internal nodes were Deadlock’s. This was fine. Good.  _ Safe _ . 

And it  _ did _ feel good, Pit-dammit, because he was  _ trying _ to let it feel good,  _ trying _ to lose himself in the sensation without letting the reality make it through to his processor and trigger off the spark-deep need to be  _ anywhere but here _ . He could feel the desire to push his frame away from him lurking in the back of his processor but he couldn’t let himself give that desire any room. He had to focus, and the pleasure was the only thing that he dared to focus on. 

He imagined Deadlock there between his thighs, looking up at him with respect that stopped just short of the hero-worship that he had no use for. Deadlock teasing him, engine purring at the taste of Megatron’s lubricants, sending wonderful little vibrations through his plating. Deadlock coaxing his spike from its housing with strong, sure strokes of his servo. Deadlock laughing… 

No. That laugh took him out of the fantasy. It was too deep, too recognisably Overlord. 

“Well done,” Overlord said to him mockingly. “You’re nice and wet for me now, aren’t you?” He pumped three digits in and out of Megatron’s vave to prove his point, a stretch that managed to skirt being painful and just felt  _ full _ .  _ Satisfying _ . Megatron bit back a moan. “You must like whoever you were thinking of. But now that you’re all fired up and ready to be used, the only mech you’re allowed to think about is  _ me _ .”

Overlord gave a few more lazy pumps of his servo and Megatron tried not to buck his hips into the movement. Overlord’s optics narrowed. “You’re holding back,” he said. “I told you what you’re meant to be doing, didn’t I? If you  _ like _ what I’m doing you should be asking for more.”

Megatron shuttered his optics, briefly, all he felt safe allowing himself. His charge was high enough now that revulsion and desire could exist alongside one another, and he hated it. Gradually, he let himself move, rocking against Overlord’s digits, into the thumb that had started to circle his node. 

“Isn’t that better?” Overlord told him. “Make a show of it. You do owe your hero a reward for his bold attempt at rescue, after all.”

Megatron risked a glance at Razoraptor. The beastformer was hunched by the berth, though unable to get any further down than kneeling because of the chain that held him. Razoraptor locked optics with him briefly, guiltily. There was nothing in his gaze but silent horror. 

“Now, what is it you need to satisfy you Megatron, hmmm?” Overlord asked him. “Your valve is hungry for something a bit more than  _ this _ , isn’t it?” A particularly ardent thrust of his digits punctuated his point. Megatron let himself moan, telling himself it was nothing more than acting for Overlord’s satisfaction. The same false, forced capitulation as the arena, as with Tarn. 

He knew what Overlord wanted to hear though. He just wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to say it. 

“I suppose I could just keep teasing you like this,” Overlord said, with pretend curiosity. “Edge you towards overload over and over again? Maybe that’s what you want. Is it? Are you the kind of needy slut who simply can’t be satisfied with  _ one _ overload?”

“No,” Megatron bit out, horrified at the idea of what Overlord was promising. Threatening. “No I… I want you to frag me.”

“You might have to say that a bit louder. I didn’t quite hear.”

“I want you to frag me Overlord,” Megatron said, almost shouting. Stress tinged his speech with static. “I need your spike inside me. Please.” Every word that came out of his mouth made him want to purge, but did nothing to lessen the heat building in his frame in waves. 

It would be so, so easy to go away. It felt like he was just on the edge of it, of that place where the world was seen through a plate of fuzzy glass. Things seemed to slip in and out of focus, but he needed to keep on paying attention, to the pleasure, to Overlord. He had to stay right here where things were painfully real. 

“How can I refuse?” Overlord said, and pushed himself up so he could line up his spike with Megatron’s valve. He nudged the head of it slowly over the lips of the opening, a wet rub that slightly hit his node with each small thrust. Megatron found himself gasping, fans whirring, cycling air as he sought out sensation, pelvis undulating as he tried to get more, just a little more. There was no point in trying to hold back, to censor his frame’s reactions. Overlord would see that he was doing it and then all of this might be for nothing. 

“Good mech,” Overlord said. He pushed his spike down with one servo and guided it into Megatron’s valve, seating himself with one deep push. Megatron whined, hating how good it felt. With the repairs to his mesh, there wasn’t even any slight sting of pain to counteract it, to remind his frame that none of this was with his consent. His spike was pinned between his belly and Overlord’s as the other mech covered his frame with his own, placing small light bites against the cables of his neck where the collar didn’t cover them. “Show me how much you want this.”

Megatron wrapped his legs around Overlord’s waist and urged him into a rhythm, fragging himself onto his spike, ignoring who it belonged to and simply chasing the pleasure. His frame wanted it -  _ he _ didn’t want it. He kept repeating that over and over to himself, although it didn’t serve to make him feel any better. Overlord bit down hard enough to draw energon and then lapped it away, a spark of pain that wasn’t anywhere near enough to counteract Megatron’s charge, indeed only the opposite. His array was alight with beautiful sensation, and he  _ wanted _ the overload that his rapist fully intended to wring out of him. 

Half of that was because at least then it would be  _ over _ .

“Tell me,” Overlord ordered. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Good,” Megatron said through gritted dentae. “I feel good. I…”

“More specific.”

“I love your spike inside me. I want you in me, fragging me harder, I want you to make me overload.” He couldn’t help the tint of hate that came out along with the words but Overlord only laughed at it. He picked up the pace, slamming into Megatron’s valve, filling him to the deepest part, stimulating every node and sensor. 

“I doubt I’ll even need to touch your spike, will I?” Overlord said, engine roaring, scent of ozone pouring off of him. If Megatron was close, then so was he. “You’ll overload like this, just from my spike inside you. That’s what you are Megatron - needy, hungry, submissive shareware, good for warming spikes and little else. That’s what you’ve become, and you can’t go back from it.”

The charge was crackling between them, skittering between plating. 

“Say it,” Overlord told him. “Tell me what you’re good for.”

Megatron would have shuttered his optics but it would only make the rising tide of ecstasy more acute, make him feel even less in control of what was happening. He looked away, up at the ceiling where there were no hungry, hot optics staring at him. “I’m shareware,” he said, dismayed that none of this humiliating dirty talk was having the slightest effect on his charge. At least he had never been the sort of mech who was into that in the normal manner of things, because he didn’t think he would have been able to take such a kink used against him. “I’m good for taking spike and being fragged and nothing else.”

“Very good,” Overlord purred, speaking straight into his audial. His hips pistoned, powerful thrusts that managed to rub and stimulate both Megatron’s spike and node to various degrees. “Now, are you going to overload for me like a good little spike-warmer?”

“Yes,” Megatron begged, because Primus yes, he just wanted this to be  _ over _ . “Please yes.”

A little more was all that it took. Megatron overloaded  _ hard _ , spike spurting transfluid in an arc over his own chestplates, optics flaring, valve callipers rippling around the spike inside him tight enough to push Overlord over the edge as well with a deep, lustful groan. They both subsided onto the berth with faint wisps of smoke rising from their joints. 

After a half-breem or so, Overlord pulled out of him. Mingled lubricants and transfluid dripped out after him, a now-uncomfortable dampness between Megatron’s legs. “You see,” Overlord said, addressing Razoraptor whom Megatron had almost managed to forget was still in the room with him. “You hardly need to bother rescuing him when he’s  _ enjoying _ himself so much.”

Razoraptor said nothing. Megatron didn’t want to look at him directly, sudden shame flushing along his energon lines, but from the corner of his visual field he could see that the beastformer was just staring down at the floor. 

“Let him go now,” Megatron said. He sounded fragged-out, vocaliser strained. “Please, Overlord.” He did not remind Overlord that he had given his word, which was only likely to induce him to break it. 

“Oh, I will,” Overlord said, with a lazy smile. “There is just one thing first.” He rolled from the berth to standing, then kicked Razoraptor so that he fell backwards, sprawling out on the deck. The beastformer looked up at him in terror. Megatron dared not intervene, suspecting it would only make whatever this was worse. 

Overlord crouched, and tore Razoraptor’s modest panel away with a swift tug of hooked claws. Razoraptor squawked in pain and started to stammer something - Overlord reached down and dug his fully extended claws deep into the beastformer’s spike housing. The squawk became a scream. Megatron kept his expression impassive as Overlord drew Razoraptor’s spike out half-mangled, then tore it free from his frame entirely. 

“A lesson not to touch toys that don’t belong to you,” Overlord said. “Now run back to Deathsaurus and give him the same warning.” He stood back. 

Razoraptor spent a few moments curled into a ball and weeping before finally pulling together the strength and will to scramble to his pedes and make a run for it, leaving a dripping trail of energon behind him. 

“I wonder if Nickel will try and repair this,” Overlord mused, looking down at the crumpled spike in his servo. “Somehow I don’t imagine she’ll bother.” He turned back to Megatron and leaned over him to retrieve the stasis cuffs.

Megatron was still free for a brief moment, he could have… have… 

His whole frame felt heavy and struttless. He was too disgusted, with Overlord, with himself, and the loathing was pinning him down to the berth. Overlord grabbed his wrists and fitted the cuffs back on. Then he caressed the side of Megatron’s helm. 

“Don’t imagine I’m going to continue being as nice to you as that,” he said. 

Megatron twitched, unable to suppress his instinctive reaction of disbelief. Was that what Overlord really thought that had been? Or was it some kind of mind-game, just designed to make Megatron feel worse? 

“You were a good berth-toy though,” Overlord continued. “I’ve already rewarded you for that with an overload and with my mercy, but you’ve put me in a generous mood. I think it’s time I fetched you some energon.”

Megatron said nothing. He knew he was running low, but there was no point in paying attention to the exact percentage of fuel remaining in his tanks when there was nothing he could do about it. 

Overlord smiled at him, gave him one last pat, and left the room again. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overlord plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can still make no promises regarding a regular update schedule for this at the moment. Have this interstitial chapter before the final big 'scene' of Megatron's torment.

There was a low warmth suffusing Overlord’s frame, and a lightness to his step as he walked. He felt satisfied in a way that was hard to describe, a way that might be entirely… new. He was still half lost in the memory of Megatron writhing underneath him, begging to be given pleasure. It was hardly the first time he had dragged enjoyment out of his conquests nor the first time he had given a mech a choice between their own rape or watching it happen to another, but it had never been  _ Megatron _ before. It was still a little hard to believe that after all these millions of years he actually  _ had him _ . That he had actually  _ won _ . 

Overlord had  _ every _ intention of stretching this out as far as possible. Garrus-9 had taught him a lot about how to break a mech’s spirit, to take from them everything that they had. He had been frequently careless there, snuffing sparks without entirely meaning to given that he had so many spare and at his mercy, but even that had been educational. It had taught him limits. It had taught him when to stop, and when he could press on. He was not about to take any kind of risk when it came to Megatron. There would be no escape for him in death. 

Megatron would break, and it might not even take that long. Overlord had been giving him particularly special attention, after all. Normally he didn’t have such a vast amount of free time to devote to one particular mech. Even Fortress Maximus, his special prison project, had been left for long stretches alone to properly appreciate everything that had been done to him. For some mechs that was worse than simply repeating the torture, but Overlord did not want to try it with Megatron. That was partly selfishness because it would mean restraining himself from sating his arousal with Megatron’s frame, but also because he knew Megatron too well. Respite would only allow him to shore up his mental defences, to regain the strength of his will rather than wear away at it. So there was no reason to hold back. 

There was something so sweet and… almost  _ tender _ about watching a mech break, about the wounded vulnerability in their optics, about knowing you were the one who was responsible for it and held such power over their processor. The end state of it, the mechanimal of instinct and fear and willingness to please that they became at the end of the process was delicious in its own way too. Overlord was looking forward to the point where Megatron became no more than that, but he did not want it to happen too quickly. He doubted he would get bored with Megatron in whichever state for many, many vorns, but the prospect of that boredom eventually happening was painful. 

He did not  _ want _ to tire of Megatron. 

There was a vague idea at the back of his processor about what he might do to refresh the experience, but it might not work, and would require him to get his servos on a set on mnemosurgery needles. They were hard to come by these days, and most who knew the secret of their construction were long dead. Still, if he could… If he had them… Megatron need not  _ remember _ the events that had broken his spirit. Overlord could wipe the slate clean, back to the moment he had captured him in a field of blue flowers, or even to some point before. He could do the whole thing over again, perhaps differently each time. 

It would damage Megatron’s processor to do so too often no doubt, but even that thought held its pleasure. 

But enough contemplation of the future! Overlord had a few tasks that needed to be completed before he collected energon to fuel his captive, setting up the next step of the grand fantasy of degradation he had been conjuring in his processor ever since claiming Megatron for his own, and altering on the fly as various new opportunities presented itself. He headed first to the  _ Peaceful Tyranny’s _ medbay, to see Nickel. He had yet to properly thank her for her contributions, and he had a new project in mind that would require her skills. 

“Back already?” Nickel said as he entered, looking up from one of the medical berths. She was bent over a familiar frame - that beastformer whose name he hadn’t bothered to get - examining the ruined, empty spike-sheath of his bared array. So he had run straight for the medbay - or not exactly straight because Deathsaurus was here as well, standing guard over his soldier. 

The lord of the warworld mantled his wings and bared sharp dentae as his optics locked on Overlord. “You!” He shouted. “You owe me an explanation!”

Overlord was not impressed by this display. He was a Phase Sixer. A superweapon. One mech, even a general and a powerful warrior, could not come close to defeating him. Megatron had been the only one capable of  _ that _ feat, and now even he was brought low. Overlord was master of whatever and whomever he  _ wanted _ to be master of. 

The beastformer lying on the medberth had shrunk back, almost pressing into Deathsaurus’ flank, optics wide and terrified. Overlord smirked at him. 

“What do you need me to explain?” he asked calmly. 

“What makes you think you have the right to  _ mutilate _ my mechs…” Deathsaurus began, before Overlord held up a servo to stop him, already bored. 

“Did he tell you what he was doing?” he asked. “Or was he too much a coward to mention that part?”

Deathsaurus paused. Considered. Grudgingly, he admitted, “He mentioned it, yes.”

“Then surely you agree that his actions were not acceptable?” Overlord said, which was its own trap. Deathsaurus had to agree or he admitted his own complicity, and then Overlord would have the pleasure of getting  _ Tarn _ involved as well. Deathsaurus had proven useful enough to be taken off the List once - that usefulness was at an end now and would not save him a second time. 

Deathsaurus said nothing. 

“He informed me he was working alone,” Overlord continued. “That you knew nothing of it. I merely decided to save you the trouble of disciplining him, as I’m  _ sure _ you would have done.”

Deathsaurus watched him carefully with four narrowed optics. “When discipline is warranted, then it is  _ my _ right to administer it. Not yours. Not anyone else’s on board. If something like this ever was to happen again Overlord, I would  _ expect _ you to bring the situation and the offender to  _ me _ . Not take it into your processor to play some kind of sick game…”

Overlord shrugged. He had better things to do right at this moment than fight Deathsaurus, although he had no fear of being defeated by the beastformer. Nor did he have any compunction about breaking his word if he gave it - he would keep it only if it benefited him to do so. “If you feel so  _ strongly _ about it,” he said. 

“I do,” Deathsaurus replied, still poised for violence. “Now, what did you do with… with that certain part of Razoraptor’s anatomy?”

Overlord widened his optics in mock surprise. “But if I gave it  _ back _ he wouldn’t learn the lesson! If he’s worried about working off his charge he can always roll over and let someone at his valve - he still has that.”

“Overlord…” Deathsaurus started to say, but Razoraptor tugged frantically at one of the trailing pinions of his wings. 

“I really don’t want to cause any more trouble,” the beastformer said. He looked terrified of provoking Overlord’s wrath, as well he should. 

“You see,” Overlord said, smiling. “Now, I came here to talk to my good friend Nickel, and the two of you are getting in the way of that. Are you done?”

“Well medic?” Deathsaurus asked. “Is there anything else you can do for my soldier?”

Nickel had wisely been staying out of the conversation until this point. She looked the beastformer over and shrugged. “Self-repair will take care of the dents I haven’t popped out. Not much more I can do, certainly not without getting his spike back. It’s not the kind of part anyone bothers to bring on board a spaceship, given the limited space.” 

“Then we will be going,” Deathsaurus said, as though putting it that way made it seem like his own idea rather than Overlord chasing them out. He helped his soldier carefully up off the berth, and kept his frame between him and Overlord as they left. 

“Alright,” Nickel said, once they had gone. “That was pretty funny. But what’s the actual reason you came here, since I don’t think it was continuing to terrorise that idiot.”

“Partly it was to say thank you again,” Overlord said, almost purring with pleasure. “That motor override… it really was quite something. He simply had to lie there as I cracked open his chestplates and played with his spark…”

Nickel held up a servo. “Don’t need to hear the details,” she said. “All I need to know is that he’s getting his just desserts.”

“I merely wanted you to know how much I appreciate the unparalleled opportunity you gave me,” Overlord told her. “Plus I want to do it again - not right away. But again.”

Nickel hesitated, but only for a moment. “I suppose I can,” she said. “Just not too often. Otherwise I could blow out the relays for good and then it would take a full frame overhaul to get him moving again. Not convenient, for either of us.” 

Overlord pouted, but only slightly. “Oh very well,” he said. “There was one other thing though. A bit of a spontaneous idea.” He reached into his subspace and drew out the mangled remains of Razoraptor’s spike. Nickel gave him a concerned look. 

“What, exactly, do you want me to do with that?” she asked. 

“Can you turn it into a toy?” Overlord asked. “Some kind of self-service device, one that vibrates if at all possible. I’m afraid I didn’t think to bring anything like that with me, given our initial mission statement.”

Nickel briefly shuttered her optics, then vented. “Okay, okay. You want me to turn a real, actual mech’s spike into a vibrator.  _ Why? _ ” 

Overlord gave her a knowing look. “A present for Megatron, of course,” he said. 

“Yeah, I thought so,” Nickel said, not looking particularly impressed. She held out her servo. “Give it here. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you Nickel,” Overlord said, and passed the spike over. 

\----

The second mech he needed to talk to was Tarn. Luckily he was not hard to find, lurking in his quarters. It was hard to make out Tarn’s expression behind the mask, but when he opened the door Overlord fancied he detected a certain eagerness. 

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Overlord asked. 

Tarn stood aside. “Deathsaurus messaged me,” he said. “It was primarily a complaint about your behaviour, but also worded as a warning for my own subordinates.”

Overlord smiled. “Does he imagine you have any kind of control over me? Perhaps I should correct him.”

“I… allowed you on board my ship,” Tarn said, which was a generous way of expressing that he’d been beaten within an inch of offlining and was only alive to ‘allow’ anything at Overlord’s discretion. “I recruited him and his soldiers. I am…”

“In charge?” Overlord finished. “Only in an administrative capacity. You’re lucky I have no appetite for ruling, since I can’t abide mechs expecting me to be  _ responsible _ for them. In any case, I hardly came here to ensure you weren’t plotting with Deathsaurus. He won’t even be with us much longer, will he?” 

Tarn shook his helm. “No, he promised only to assist until Megatron’s death, and since that is no longer our aim, he and all of his mechs will leave once we return to their warworld.”

Overlord nodded. “ _ Your _ mechs have nothing to fear from me presently anyway,” he said. “They will touch Megatron only with my permission, now  _ won’t _ they?”

“I haven’t even told them they might have that privilege yet,” Tarn said. “You aren’t known for sharing, per se.”

True. Overlord knew himself to be selfish and saw nothing wrong with that. “That's what I came to speak about,” he said. “My  _ generous _ plans to share.”

Tarn stiffened, slight and almost imperceptible, but not entirely able to hide his sudden and keen interest. 

“What kind of recording equipment do you have on board this ship?” Overlord asked. “And broadcasting bandwidth, for that matter?”

“Recording equipment… You mean you plan to film Megatron?”

“Film him and everything we’re going to do to him, yes,” Overlord said. He could feel lust stir and heat his array at the very thought. “I want every remaining Decepticon and ex-Decepticon to see exactly what has become of their glorious leader. I want them to see  _ my _ victory - and yours by proxy, since the Justice Division are going to be  _ very much _ involved.”

Tarn could not suppress a small shudder of excitement, nor the click-whirr of his fans activating. “What a wonderful idea,” he said. “It’s common knowledge by now that he turned traitor, so why not make sure  _ everyone _ sees that the punishment for traitors is no less now merely because the war is supposedly over.”

“So, can it be done from the  _ Peaceful Tyranny? _ ” Overlord asked. 

“Oh yes,” Tarn said. “Kaon is well versed in collecting footage.”

“Kaon? He doesn’t even have optics.”

“He was constructed without them,” Tarn said. “He has other methods of detecting his surroundings, but at times he will utilise small aerial drones when an optical feed is truly necessary. He has become quite adept over the vorns.”

“So long as he doesn’t let his charge distract him,” Overlord said. “Next megacycle then. I have some ideas to prepare him, if Nickel can be done in time.”

\----

For a while Megatron felt his processor was in a grey haze, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, merely existing. Eventually he grasped the energy to think about the poor beastformer, who might not have escaped Overlord’s wrath  _ intact _ , but had at least escaped. That was one good thing, was it not? If shame and self-hatred were gnawing away at the core of him simply because he had submitted, could he not content himself slightly with the knowledge that he genuinely had saved a spark? 

He had half-expected Overlord to simply go ahead and kill Razoraptor anyway, but as he lay there some further thought made him realise that no, of course Overlord would spare him. If he proved that his word was good in such circumstances it left him free to recreate the scenario. Threaten some other mech with rape and torture to get Megatron to play-act desire for him once again. If he killed Razoraptor then it would be clear there was no point to compliance. 

That Overlord had cunning to go with his monstrosity was one of the more terrible things about him. 

He had cuffed him again on leaving, but not bothered with the chain. It still lay on the floor, flecked with the dried remains of Razoraptor’s energon. It gave him the freedom of the room if he wanted it, but Megatron was certain the door was locked, coded to Overlord’s signal. What was the point in it?

Megatron’s fuel tanks were becoming more and more insistent in pinging their status at him. He had not been particularly  _ active _ during the past… how long had it been? A mere two megacycles? Surely that couldn’t be possible. Surely it had been longer than that? 150 cycles seemed like no time at all, and yet he had recharged only once… 

He had not been burning through energon, but he had certainly  _ lost _ it from his injuries, those from the plasma whip most notable amongst them. Nickel had not topped him up after repairing him as medics usually would. That had put him down by now to a mere 11%, and he was no longer used to operating on the thin line of starvation as both the mines and later the lean parts of the war had taught him. 

As though summoned by the thought of his hunger, Overlord reappeared. As he had promised, he had a large cube of energon with him. Megatron sat up on the berth, instantly wary. His systems ran up to high-alert rapidly, back on the knife’s edge, wondering how this too would be used against him. 

Overlord approached, looking him over with an appreciation that made Megatron’s plating crawl. For all his wariness however, Megatron could not prevent his optics flicking to the energon cube, trying to split his attention between it and his tormentor. 

“You look like you need this,” Overlord said, engine purring. He dug a digit into the corner of the containment field, puncturing a small hole in the cube. He tipped it slightly, causing a large splash of pink fluid to hit the floor. “Oops,” he said, without sincerity. 

Megatron’s fuel-pump sent him an urgent protest. He  _ needed _ to fuel. He was too old to red-line, and besides which Overlord was bound to hurt him badly again. The thought of dropping into an unfueled stasis around his captor was… horrifying. 

“Well?” Overlord said, looking from him to the spilled energon and back. “Aren’t you going to clean that up?”

Megatron cycled air in a quiet vent. Oh course. Of course. This was a tired trope, in all honesty, and he had thought Overlord above such a lack of imagination, but it was in the end a more simple humiliation. He could refuse, and then he would go without which was surely the more foolish option. 

He could put up with this. It wasn’t as bad as some of what had been done to him. 

Megatron got down off the berth, knelt, and bent down to put his glossa to the silky pool. The energon was thick with dust, but he had forced himself to consume worse contaminants in his functioning. There was a trickling sound as Overlord tipped the cube again, and more energon fell. It splashed on the floor around Overlord’s pedes, and partly over that plating. 

Megatron paused only long enough to steel his will to the task. He lapped again from the floor, then began cleaning Overlord’s pedes, the tang of oil and the ghost of old wax joining the taste of dust and dirt. 

“Well done,” Overlord said, mockingly. “Just where you belong.”

Megatron looked up, having finished what little energon there had been. Overlord had been waiting for that, because he met Megatron’s gaze as he slowly and deliberately brought the cube in close and let it run down his abdominal plating, over his closed modesty panel, and along the seams of his legs. Megatron narrowed his optics. Overlord smiled at him, and raised a brow ridge. 

Fine. Fine. He could see where this was going. Megatron licked up along Overlord’s plating, catching every small drip of energon, determined to waste none of it given what he was going through to have it. Overlord’s engine rumbled with pleasure as Megatron got closer to his array. Megatron attempted to make his actions as clinical and cold as he could, but there was only so much one could do under these circumstances. Overlord waited until he was licking against his modesty panel itself to retract it, doing so with enough speed that Megatron’s glossa was circling over his spike-housing before he had time to lean away. 

“Why stop?” Overlord asked, when he  _ did _ move back. “Are you full already Megatron?”

Megatron said nothing. His spark was burning with hate. 

“Well then,” Overlord said, and raised the cube to his own lips. 

“No,” Megatron said quickly. “No, I’m not full.”

“That wasn’t so hard, now was it,” Overlord chided him. “So what is it you need?”

“I need more energon,” Megatron said, and added when Overlord made no attempt to move, “Please. Sir.”

“Better,” Overlord said, and let energon drip down over his pressurising spike. He swirled the still half-full cube around, letting the energon glisten. “Now, do something about  _ that _ , and you can have the rest.”

Megatron bit back everything he  _ wanted _ to say, and leaned in again intent on getting this over with as quickly as possible. It seemed Overlord actually wanted him to take the lead in pleasuring him, which was in some ways slightly better than simply grabbing the back of his helm and fragging his intake. He knew how to suck spike. It felt uncomfortable in his spark particularly given what had so recently happened - what he had done for Overlord - but… He needed to stay fueled. If he wanted to do anything, if he wanted to reach for that connection to the event horizon when the time came, he needed the strength to do so. 

He leaned in and took Overlord’s spike into his mouth, running his glossa over the head, dipping lightly into the transfluid slit. Overlord let out a moan of pleasure, no shame keeping  _ him _ from making his enjoyment clear. Megatron’s still-cuffed servos went to his hips, running digits over the seams in plating, pressing in and teasing the more sensitive cables lying underneath. The faster he pushed Overlord’s charge over the edge, the faster this would be over and done with. 

“Aren’t you eager?” Overlord said, servo coming up to press against the back of Megatron’s helm, the touch gentle but the threat of easily becoming more. “I’m surprised at you.”

Megatron said nothing - could say nothing. Silence was better anyway. He tightened his lips around Overlord’s spike and moved, glossae caressing the bottom of the shaft while he let the head of it press deep into his intake. He tried to keep the rthymn of it interesting, though trying at the same time not to think too much about what he was doing. It had been a long time since the last time he had done this. 

It had been pleasant, once, to make another mech cry out in pleasure because of him, to call his name in tones of ecstasy. There was nothing pleasant about  _ this _ . 

The eventual overload, when it came, was a drawn out affair. Overlord’s spike pumped transfluid down Megatron’s intake in a way that made him want to purge, but his tanks were too dry for the instinct to go anywhere. He let the fluid settle inside him, let Overlord pull back from him and slide himself away behind his panel again. He could not meet his captor’s optics. 

Overlord pulled him to his pedes. He had spilt none of the half-cube, even through his overload. Perhaps that had been the reason for emptying part of it out before now. Megatron felt his gaze drawn to it, waiting, hungry. Overlord hummed, and raised the cube to his own lips. Megatron stiffened, pained, betrayed, half-desperate with need for fuel. Overlord took a mouthful and held it there, smiling. Then he leaned in, and pressed his lips to Megatron’s mouth which lay part-open in surprise. 

Energon trickled in, passed from one intake to another. 

Megatron’s spark rebelled at this mockery of affection, but hunger was quick to win out. He let his lips part, let Overlord feed him like this. When Overlord drew away from the kiss it was only to refill his mouth and dive straight back in. 

He fed Megatron like this until the cube was gone, until Megatron’s plating was shuddering from the unpleasantness of it. Then he pushed him back onto the berth and joined him there. 

“Rest,” Overlord told him. “There’s something special waiting for you in the morning.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The torment of pleasure is hard to resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this next chapter up because this section is just the beginning and it's already fairly long.

Megatron recharged fitfully, rising in and out of that restful state. The heavy, warm frame pressed to his was making his plating crawl, and even though he could tell that Overlord was not awake his processor couldn’t relax, constantly worried that some new horror would be forced upon him. Overlord’s promise about ‘something special’ waiting for him certainly was not helping either. He could think of too many possibilities. 

Megatron did not often know fear, because fear implied a situation one was not prepared and ready to face, but he was afraid now. He was not prepared, and he was not in control. He was more and more tormented by the knowledge of his own helplessness. 

At least his fuel-tanks were no longer sending him warnings, although they were far from full. The cube Overlord had given him had only been enough to bring him out of the danger zone and no more. Megatron imagined that whole humiliating charade he had gone through would be repeated in some way or other the next time he needed energon. 

He did, after a while, manage to get some recharge. He was woken, as Overlord was, by the chime of the door. Megatron checked his internal chronometer quickly - it had been roughly six cycles, more than enough time for a decent rest under better circumstances. Enough time for this to count as ‘morning’. He kept very still and tried to pretend he was still recharging, a sparkling’s urge to delay the inevitable. Behind him, Overlord rose, and went over to answer the door. 

“Ah, Nickel,” Overlord said, sounding pleased. 

“Here,” the medic said. Megatron risked bringing one optic online, trying to get an idea of what they were doing. Overlord knelt down, taking something from the minibot. Megatron’s view of  _ what _ was blocked by their frames. 

“You continue to outdo yourself,” Overlord said. “I thought it might take longer.”

“Tarn mentioned you needed it quickly,” Nickel said. “Not that he knew what ‘it’ was. He came to invite me to your little party, as part of the team, but I told him the same thing I told you. Forcing a mech doesn’t getting me revving.”

Megatron shuttered his optic again. A ‘party’. With ‘the team’, which surely meant the Justice Division. He was starting to form an impression of what Overlord might intend for him this megacycle. 

“Are you sure?” Overlord said. “Perhaps you simply don’t know what you’re missing?”

Nickel scoffed. “No thanks,” she said. “My imagination works perfectly well, thank you.”

“Ah well,” Overlord said. “Then I shall start putting this to good use.” He must mean whatever Nickel had been making for him. 

The door slid shut. Megatron continued to lie still, optics shuttered, dreading what was to come. At least he had some warning. At least he could prepare himself, internally, for what would be done to him. 

Overlord’s pedes-steps came towards him, and Megatron could feel the heat from his frame when he stood over him. Then there was a sudden flash of pain as Overlord slapped him across the faceplates - he opened his optics instinctively to see his captor smiling down at him. 

“Good morning Megatron,” Overlord said. He held something up - an interface toy, a lovingly detailed false spike. Or… “Do you recognise this?” Overlord asked him, bringing it closer. “I admit, you didn’t get to see it for long.”

It was just a little  _ too _ detailed, with dulled, inactive biolights and a transfluid channel. Megatron had a horrible suspicion he knew exactly what Overlord meant. He refused to ask the question out loud, but the realisation must have shown in his expression because Overlord laughed. 

“That’s right,” he said. “At least some part of your would-be saviour will get to have some fun with you.”

It was morbid, sacreligeous, but for Overlord it seemed there were no taboos. Megatron briefly shuttered his optics. He  _ did not want _ that inside him, but what he wanted had absolutely no bearing on anything. 

Overlord crouched on the berth and forced Megatron’s legs apart. Megatron tried to fight it, tried to wrestle away from him, but his servos were still cuffed and his joints were grinding from inactivity, from cycles doing nothing but lying here. He had no leverage, and Overlord managed to wedge himself between Megatron’s thighs after a brief struggle. If anything the fight seemed to please him, his optics glowing bright and happy. He spread the lips of Megatron’s valve apart and positioned the head of the disembodied spike there, just nudging at his entrance. 

Megatron felt his engine hammering, battle-protocols onlining and stalling out for lack of resources, lack of options. There was an odd sense of panic ricocheting around his system even though this was just one more rape amongst many, even though he should be used to it by now and able to withstand the experience. 

Overlord started to slide the spike in, slowly, gently. It rubbed against Megatron’s mesh and his internal nodes in a way that was not entirely unpleasant, which only made the fear worse. Finally it was fully seated, the base of it held in place by Overlord’s thumb pressing against where it had once been attached to Razoraptor’s frame. It was not as big as Overlord’s spike by any measure, but it still stimulated plenty of the nodes inside Megatron’s valve. He tried to move away, but that only increased the stimulation and he stopped again. 

Overlord pulled something new from his subspace. It looked like no more than a smooth, slightly curved piece of metal. Overlord pressed it down over Megatron’s array, and then he felt the tug as it magnetised. Overlord took his servo away and the metal remained in place holding the disembodied spike inside him. Megatron’s plating shivered, still repulsed by the whole scenario. 

“Isn’t that nice,” Overlord said, giving the plate a little pat. He pinged some sort of signal over short-band radio, and Megatron jerked as the spike inside him started to  _ vibrate _ . He tried to move away from the sudden increase in stimulation, the pleasure it was starting to cause as it rubbed against his internal nodes and lit up his interface system, but there was nowhere for him to go. No escape from this. 

Megatron could already feel his lubrication subroutine come online, feel a wetness inside his valve. There would be nowhere for any of that lubricant to go either. Remaining still and trying to move were both as equally useless as each other and his frame didn’t know what to do. 

“You look good like this already,” Overlord said. His fans were a low buzz in the air. 

Megatron said nothing. As the sensation started to build, he could feel his spike pinging insistently to pressurise and it was taking an immense effort of will to stop it. An effort that would only be effective for so long. As the tip of his spike started to twitch at the entrance of its housing, Overlord put a digit over it. 

“Oh no,” Overlord said. “None of that.” He brought another of those little magnets out of subspace, and clamped it down over Megatron’s spike housing. Now all that his spike could do was tap against the panel, a push that was on the edge of painful yet not quite there. It would have been better if there  _ had _ been pain, rather than this sensation of being pent up and on edge. 

Megatron found himself curling up, bringing his cuffed servos down towards the panel Overlord had placed there as though he could, what? Pry it off? Rub himself through it? He didn’t know, and Overlord caught him before he had a chance to do anything. 

“Only obedient toys can earn a reward,” he said into Megatron’s audial, bent over him. Then he was moving, pulling Megatron up and off the berth and throwing him onto the floor. Megatron was finding it difficult to give Overlord his attention - the spike inside him kept  _ pulsing _ , sending waves of charge through his valve, only helped along by the conductive properties of the lubricant that was now pooling there too. Chains jingled, and Megatron found himself maneuvered into position kneeling with his arms pulled up above his helm again, bound to the ceiling beam. His thighs spread apart almost of their own volition, seeking sensation. 

His optics fluttered shut - then opened again swiftly as something dropped down over them. Megatron tried to jerk his helm away, but the blindfold Overlord had tied onto him held despite the sudden movement. Overlord tightened it at the back of his helm and stepped away. Megatron could follow him by the noises of his frame and the purr of his engine, but he had no idea exactly what he was doing. Fear and the edge of panic were close to the surface yet again. 

“I wonder how long you can last like that?” Overlord said. “Worked up and desperate.” 

The lack of visual input was making it worse, harder to focus. His array buzzed with maddening pleasure that was ratcheting slowly upwards, never quite enough. Megatron did his best not to react, to stay still and quiescent and let it happen, but it was becoming ever more difficult to suppress the urge to  _ move _ , to grind into the vibration and seek out  _ more.  _

He could go away again. Let his processor drift from his frame, leave his frame to its own devices. Yet he was afraid of what Overlord might to do him with his attention away, or what might happen when Tarn and the rest of the Justice Division arrived. Pushing away reality had helped in the past because it let him endure, but the patterns were different now and it did not feel safe for him to rely on automatic, programmed reaction until the torment was over. He did not know what was coming. Uncertainty was too big a threat. Nervous, tense anticipation would not let him leave for that hazy unreality. 

Megatron’s charge was only getting worse. Desparation tore at him, too reminiscent of letting Overlord frag an overload out of him before their recharge. He did not want to beg like Overlord had made him. He would not. He refused. 

Again pedesteps, circling him. An appreciative hum and rumble of engines. The background whine of fans - both Overlord’s and Megatron’s own now. Overlord’s servo brushed against the edge of Megatron’s helm, a light, teasing touch. It sent a shiver over his sensory network. 

“So needy,” Overlord said. He ran a digit down over Megatron’s chestplates, toying with seams and cables in delicate places. The feedback of the sensation was interpreted by his over-charged system as just more pleasure, and Megatron bit down on his own glossa to prevent from whimpering. He felt himself moving with little concious control of it, jerking his hips against the spike in his valve. It was just small enough to move with a combination of gravity and the squeeze of his callipers, as though he really was being fragged. Just enough stimulation… 

An overload took Megatron by surprise, a shuddering burn of charge rising from the deepest nodes of his valve. He gasped, his backstrut a stiff arc of pleasure. Overlord groaned at the sight and Megatron was glad he could not see his expression. 

He tried to relax, thinking it might be over, but the spike was still vibrating and his charge was still there, lessened but not expended. With his spike locked away, the only discharge point for all of this energy was his valve and apparently it alone was not sufficient. He could already feel the charge starting to build again as the constant, even, unchanging stimulation continued. 

Megatron slumped in his chains, his spark aching with horror. “Please…” he said.

“Please what?” Overlord asked him. Megatron was not sure of that himself. Overlord snorted. “I’m sure you can overload more than just the  _ once _ Megatron. Shall we try and find your limits together, hmm?”

Megatron ground his dentae together. He would not give Overlord the satisfaction of giving in to the pleasure. 

Easy to think that, much less so to maintain his determination. His frame felt like it was on fire. He  _ wanted _ , wanted the ongoing sensation, wanted the building charge, wanted the peak of another overload which felt so, so close… 

He was a thinking mech! Not some creature of instinct and desire! He was master of his own frame - or so his processor protested, but this situation was putting a lie to that thought. The conscious subroutines of his mind were starting to subsume themselves to his need, to the basal coding of fragging and interface. It grew ever harder to remind himself of the reasons to resist, to push back against the shameful need.

He could not see what Overlord was doing, whether he was touching himself or simply standing back and enjoying the view. He could only guess, and imagine. The unknown let his processor run wild, but even that was not enough of a distraction. 

Megatron was not caught off-guard by the second overload as he had been by the first because he was seeking it out, pushing into it, letting it crackle through his frame and scent the air with ozone and the burnt-metal edge of over-stressed circuitry. It was a long and drawn out wave of relief and release - except it was no longer-lasting than the first. Still the spike buzzed inside him. Still too much of his charge lingered unspent. 

Distant, ancient memory files were stirred up to the front of his processor by what was happening. Hazy and degraded by information creep, he recalled the mines. He recalled knowing at some point that pure-valve overloads could be drawn out and repeated, that he had played such games back then with his comrades and fellow-workers. He recalled wringing out overload after overload with his glossa buried deep in a valve - its owner’s identity long lost to time - and having the same favour repaid. 

That had been a welcome way to while away the time between shifts and forget the ache that never left their struts and joints. It wasn’t…  _ this _ . 

His chronometer was starting to glitch beneath the rogue energy scorching his system. How much time had passed? How long did it take under these circumstances for charge to build again… and again… 

A third overload had plasma welling from his optics, burning whatever it was that Overlord had used to blindfold him. He  _ wailed _ , unable to keep his vocaliser suppressed any longer. Close by him - closer than he’d thought - Overlord groaned and there was a sudden hot spray across Megatron’s faceplates. Megatron spat the transfluid from his mouth and snarled. 

“Do you  _ want _ something?” Overlord asked, sounding lazy and self-satisfied. 

“Stop this,” Megatron said. “ _ Please _ .”

“But you’re enjoying it so  _ much _ .” The noise of joints in motion - digits pressed suddenly against the magnetised plate over Megatron’s array, a stimulus that made him whimper. Lubricant was pooled inside him, he could feel it trying to leak out around the little plate. “It would be rude of me to stop before you’re utterly spent.”

“Please,” Megatron begged, abandoning all attempt at pride. “Please. Take it out.”

Overlord just laughed. 

Megatron let his helm hang down, let himself go limp in his bonds. He felt wrung out and pent up all at once. Desperation clawed at him, and he could do nothing. 

The door chimed. 

Megatron thought he knew who it would be, and the thought of the DJD seeing him like this, of  _ Tarn _ of all mechs seeing him like this… No. No. He didn’t want… 

“Let me get that,” Overlord told him. 

Megatron’s plating shuddered. He suspected his torment for this megacycle was only just beginning. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Justice Division have experience of making mechs suffer. They are eager to show off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the longest chapter yet! Enjoy the pain. 
> 
> There will be (probably) a couple of chapters after this before the rescue part. I think I might do the 'recovery' segment as a sequel rather than part of the same fic so that potential readers who just like to read about that bit can skip over this whole mess, rather than having to jump to 'chapter 17' or whatever. Also, it'll make tagging easier.

Megatron’s array was starting to feel sore and over-stimulated, which was enough to take his processor away from the ongoing burn of pleasure distracting all of his circuits. He did his best to focus his attention on his audials instead, to try and be aware of what was coming for him. Overlord’s pedesteps, loud against the metal flooring, fading slightly as he walked towards the door. A faint hiss as it opened. 

“Tarn,” Overlord said. “It’s so nice to see you and your  _ minions _ . Are you looking forward to this?”

Concentrating, Megatron thought he could hear the faint hum of other mechs’ systems, out in the corridor. They would all be there, he was certain of it. His processor churned, throwing up half-a-dozen potential decision trees, looking for a way out. There was nothing. This was going to happen, just like everything else had already happened, and there was nothing he could do about it.

No. Not  _ nothing _ . He could try to reach for the black hole, but he could barely  _ think _ like this. He wasn’t sure he could do it, and what about Razoraptor? Deathsaurus? All the other soldiers who wanted nothing to do with what Overlord was doing? 

What it he tried and failed? 

He was not in control of what was going to happen. He was not in control of his frame’s reactions and responses. Primus within, please, please let him be in control of  _ something _ even if was the decision  _ not _ to act!

“You’ve started already I see,” Tarn said, his smooth, pleasant baritone instantly recognisable. Air moved with a slight whir as it was drawn through vents and over sensors. “What a glorious scent that is!” More pedesteps, the sense of a heavy frame moving closer. Strong digits grasped his chin and tilted his helm up. “It truly is pitiful what you’ve come to Megatron. Was this weakness always sitting somewhere inside you, a flaw waiting to get out? It’s hard to believe any of us could ever have respected you.”

There were chuckles. The others, Tesarus, Helex, Kaon, Vos… Megatron knew what they were capable of. He had authorised their actions, pretended to himself that they were kept on a leash, that their victims were the price of order and loyalty within his army. 

How had he become so cruel? What sort of monster had the war turned him into? 

“Not in the mood for talking I see,” Tarn said, thrusting his helm aside and taking a step back. “Well Overlord, how would you have us begin?”

“I do have something of a narrative in mind,” Overlord said. The door hissed shut - everyone was in the room now. Megatron tried not to tense for a blow that might or might not come. It would not help him against what he could not see. “Did you bring those drones?”

“Yes.” That was Kaon. There was a high-pitched whir, and the movement of something fanning the air - several somethings. Megatron was abruptly dragged back to the arena, a crash of sense-stimulated memory from the last time he had heard that distinctive sound. Camera drones, those horrid little things that had hovered to film matches and clustered close for views of dominance and defeat. 

He ground his dentae together, half-hoping he was wrong, knowing he wasn’t. 

They were going to film this. Film it and… what? Somehow he doubted Overlord meant to keep it for his personal use. His fuel-pump churned at the thought of his rape being… being broadcast. Who would see it? Decepticons? Autobots? Would Soundwave? Optimus?  _ Starscream _ ? His  _ crew _ ? 

He should stop being surprised at Overlord’s new cruelties, and yet each time his spark trembled and shrank back from what lay ahead. 

“As much as I like having him begging to be permitted an overload,” Overlord was saying, “I want the first time we do this to be very obviously rape, so there aren’t any  _ minsunderstandings _ . I think he has a few more overloads in him just now before his system simply won’t build charge to that peak anymore, so let’s get that out of the way before you start filming.”

“Worried someone’s gonna think he  _ wanted _ to be used by all of us?” Tesarus asked, gruff voice sounding confused. 

“I agree it hardly makes him look much better,” Overlord replied. “On the other servo it will then be all the more effective down the line when we show how he’s been properly trained as a piece of shareware. We start by demonstrating how utterly we have defeated him and how powerless he is to do anything about it, and then we go on to show that he’s so weak and pathetic he’s come to  _ love _ his new place in the world - as nothing more than a toy for us to overload into.”

Huffing vents, and the click of fans coming online. “Well when you put it like  _ that _ ,” said Helex. 

It was a morally bankrupt view of interface roles, but the worst part of it was Megatron knew it would work as the propaganda they intended it to be. Nor would it only be Decepticons and ex-Decepticons who bought into it. Mechs who were now Autobots had cheered in those arena crowds.

The whole idea was abhorrent.

He still recalled in exquisitely painful detail how it had felt to stand up in front of the cameras at the end of his trial and read out that humiliating statement Optimus had prepared for him, the agony of shaming himself before the galaxy knowing it was not part of some clever plan, that the impression it left was not going to be challenged and overthrown in short order… This… this was far worse. 

“So, how shall we wear him out?” Overlord said, smug satisfaction in every word. “There’s a wonderful toy teasing his valve at the moment, but if any of you think it won’t affect your stamina too much…”

Tarn made a soft sound of amusement. There was the clatter of metal on metal as he slapped someone’s plating. “Well Helex?”

A laugh. “Never thought I’d be spiking Megatron of all mechs,” the smelter said. The heat from his chamber radiated out as he approached. Megatron shifted in place uneasily. He was certain his own frame was hotter than usual, temperature ratcheted up by the constant build and ebb of charge. Trying to analyse the actions of the Justice Division had been a welcome distraction from the feelings in his frame, and he hadn’t realised quite how much the absence of any kind of stimulus had affected the intensity of the pleasure. Had that been the reason Overlord had blindfolded him?

Above him the chain rattled, and he was jerked upright, no longer on his knees but actually hanging from his wrists with his pedes just brushing the floor. It shifted the spike inside him, pushing it somehow  _ deeper _ \- or at least so it felt. He could not hold back a whimper. A pair of smaller servos held him still around the waist so he would not swing in place while thick digits prodded between his thighs. 

“So what do I do about this?” Helex complained, prying at the magnet across Megatron’s valve. 

More pedesteps, then Overlord said close-by, “Here.” More fingers on him, then the tickle of the magnetic field disappeared and the panel dropped away in a rush of lubricant that Megatron  _ felt _ splatter down his plating, over the servos waiting there. No longer held in place, the vibrating spike fell free, made slick by that same flood of fluids. Having it  _ out _ was both a deep relief and an aching absence. 

The thing whirred on the ground. “Your toy’s escaping!” Tesarus shouted, laughing. 

With an impatient vent out, Overlord… must have picked it up. The noise it was making stopped. Megatron’s callipers were spasming, seeking what they no longer held. He hated the feeling. 

“He’s wet as a Sharkticon in heat,” Helex said, pushing two digits together into Megatron’s valve. There was a slight discomfort at the stretch, but he was too worked up from the previous overloads and the disembodied spike for it to be any more than that. Helex pumped the fingers lazily in and out of him, then added a third. Megatron grunted - Helex had large servos even for his size. “You like that traitor?” Helex asked him. 

Some part of Megatron  _ did _ . His charge was still there and the change in stimulation was… 

Helex’ thumb moved to circle his as-yet neglected node, and a few brief astroseconds of  _ that _ was about all it took. Megatron overloaded  _ again _ , a shuddering slow wave of energy that took over all of his circuits and held them there in that point of ecstasy for longer than he thought possible. He was dimly aware of crying out, but in the sustained moment he was barely aware of the world outside of his frame. 

“Didn’t even get to get my spike damp,” Helex said, as he started to come down from it again. “Is he done, or what?”

Overlord’s familiar servos ran over him, inspecting him. Megatron had no idea what he was looking for. He felt worn, used up, sore and strutless. “One more,” Overlord said after a few moments. 

Megatron truly doubted that was possible at this point. For an astrosecond he had the urge to activate his vocaliser and beg, beg for them to stop, for a reprieve, but it wasn’t as though that would achieve anything. It was easier anyway to save his energy. Helex pulled his digits out of Megatron’s valve with a wet noise and grabbed his thigh, lifting it up enough to slide himself in between. A thick, heavy spike nudged at Megatron’s entrance. 

“I got what you need,” Helex said, whispering into Megatron’s audial, pressing the hot glass of his smelter against Megatron’s backstrut. “Got a nice big spike to fill you all up, yeah.” With a grunt of pleasure, he pushed in. There was barely any resistance from Megatron’s exhausted, relaxed callipers. There was nothing to stop the deep pressure that rubbed against every one of his internal nodes, that stirred weary charge  _ yet again _ . His overtaxed system pinged protests at him, but as Helex set a punishing pace, gripping him by the hips with his secondary servos and fragging him down onto him, he could feel the electric sensation start to build up towards its peak. His nodes welcomed the rub of real movement rather than the maddening vibration of the spike. It filled him in a way the ‘toy’ hadn’t and was thus all the more satisfying as much as he didn’t want it to be. “You like that dontcha?” Helex said to him as one of his secondary servos slipped down over the magnet still trapping his spike and went for his node again. “We know what traitors like. We know how to give them what they deserve. Pain and pleasure, all of it.”

Megatron thought his dentae might crack for how hard he was clenching his jaw. He knew what they wanted from his frame and he wasn’t sure he could give it - didn’t  _ want _ to overload for them again, impaled by one of their spikes. Then, even if he did, even when  _ this _ part of it was over, there was going to be plenty more to come after it. His endurance was already starting to fray, and he was frightened of what he might come to - what his processor might  _ be _ \- when he hit that limit. 

“Come on then traitor,” Helex said, flicking his node in a way that shouldn’t have felt as good as it did. “Overload for me, for  _ us _ .”

Megatron shook his helm. He refused to give in yet again, refused even the slightest mental complicity - as though he had been complicit in the overloads which had come before! Still, even that did not help him for long. 

One final overload was drawn out of him, at least as much from the spike pounding his valve as from the attention on his anterior node. It was less intense, less a great peak of release than some of the others, but he thought it went on for longer. He shuddered through it, whimpering from over-stimulation, plating clattering and shivering. A few circuit gates tripped, signalling some actual damage had been done by overclocking him this way. 

Helex drew out of him, spike still firm and fully-pressurised. “So, you gonna make this porno with some scene-setting or something?” he asked, attention no longer on him. He let Megatron’s leg drop and stepped away. Megatron focused on keeping his vents deep and even. It would be no more than a brief reprieve, but that was still a reprieve. 

“I suppose I could give a short speech,” Tarn said, sounding happy about the idea. 

“If you must,” Overlord replied. 

Megatron did not pay much attention to what Tarn said. It would only be self-serving gloating, mixed with claims about the Cause that no longer applied to reality. Instead he focused on his own frame, on mastering it and its reactions. He drove down any remaining trickles of arousal as best he could, although with his spike locked away it was apparently impossible for it to fully discharge itself from his system. He was still running hot, extra energy suffusing his abused circuitry, but he doubted any amount of stimulation to his array would work it up enough to overload again - just as Overlord had wanted. 

Tarn had stopped talking. Megatron caught a few words about ‘the traitors’ due’, and ‘a lesson to any who would think the cause is dead’. There was a brief, slow clap which had to be sarcastic. 

“Very nice,” Overlord said, no doubt the originator of the false applause. “And look! The star of our show is hanging here waiting for us! Let’s put him out of his misery.”

There were a couple of quick pedesteps approaching, followed by the buzz of a camera-drone. Overlord’s servos grabbed his faceplates, digits forcing his jaw open with the same punishing pressure against his dentae as the last time he’d done this. Megatron considered for a moment making his captor break his dentae to get what he wanted, but what would he get out of that? A brief moment to satisfy his pride, and then shattered shards of durasteel in his mouth. He made Overlord work for it though as he pulled his mouth open wide. Something firm was shoved in - not a spike. The rim was hardened metal, but there was a central space, a gap - he could feel air on his glossa, drying the inner mesh of his intake. 

“No biting,” Overlord said mockingly, and patted his faceplates. 

Megatron’s system had identified the object as a blockage in his fueling sub-system and was increasing production of oral lubricants in an attempt to get it loose. He could feel the fluid pooling inside his mouth uncomfortably. Feeling out the edges of the device with his glossa, he was fairly sure it was meant to allow his tormentors to frag his intake without fear of getting injured in the process. His engine growled, anger having nowhere else to go. 

The chain loosened - he was dropped back down to the floor and barely managed to catch himself on his servos. There was laughter, from multiple vocalisers. Then something hit him hard in the side of the helm, snapping his neck back, all the worse because he’d had no opportunity to brace for it. Again battle subroutines activated, tearing at the facts of the situation he was in and finding nothing, no avenue of attack. 

Another blow, to his midsection this time. It was light damage, given the thickness of his armour, but this wasn’t a serious attempt to harm him. This was… ‘play’ of a sort. 

Noise and heat and movement as a large frame crouched down in front of him. A servo curled around the back of his helm to hold him still, and then his intake was spasming around the spike that was driven roughly in. Instinct made him try to pull away, but he was held firm. There was a deep, satisfied groan from above as the spike’s owner started to frag into his mouth. Over the wet sounds of it, Megatron could hear the drones buzzing, that constant, maddening, high-pitched hum. 

He did his best not to think about what was happening. The sensation was more uncomfortable than painful exactly, but his intake kept pinging him error messages and warnings about a purported blockage, and it was hard to ignore them in the way he would when sucking spike without actually  _ thinking _ about sucking spike. 

After a while, the spike was pulled out without its owner overloading, and one of the other big mechs took his place, thrusting in with similar force. There were soft sounds of pleasure, and from around him the occasional noise of servo-on-spike. They were going to take turns with him, staving off their overloads by stepping away to make the whole terrible experience last as long as possible. The future, unknown and unknowable, dragged away in front of him in a way that made his spark convulse. 

Another changeover, and then there was a frame hovering behind him, digits spreading the lips of his valve apart. The blunt head of a spike nudged in, light, teasing strokes with just the tip of it. “How does it feel,” Tarn said, “to be paid back by those you betrayed?” Then he pushed in fully and stayed there, grinding his hips in small circles, tiny shifts of movement. 

Tired, over-stimulated valve nodes were activated by the contact, lighting up with a confusion of signals. It was more tender than pleasurable, thank Primus. It had minimal effect on the remnants of charge in his system.

Tarn dragged claws down over his dorsal plating, curling off little spirals of metal and paint. Megatron could feel the damage as a light, bright pain. A distraction from the other sensations that he welcomed with a kind of relief. This he could manage. This was easier to deal with. “You see that he no longer bothers to fight us,” Tarn said, most likely addressing the cameras. “In abandoning the cause he has abandoned his strength. He has sold himself to the Autobots. He has  _ nothing _ \- save what  _ we _ choose to do to him.” The smug tone made him want to purge even more than the spike in his intake did. 

Tarn started to frag him in a rhythm of almost pulling out entirely before slamming back in, not fast, but firm, rubbing paint transfers into his aft. Meanwhile the mech at his helm changed again - a much smaller spike this time, which rubbed loosely through the gag Overlord had used on him. It seemed slightly pointless, given that it was doing little more than grinding against his glossa, but he supposed it must look good on camera. Just the kind of depravity the kind of mechs who got off on this would enjoy. 

Then there was a sudden shock of stabbing agony as dozens of needle-sharp barbs extended from the spike and drove into the mesh of his intake. Megatron yelled in surprise and pain both, trying to jerk his helm backwards which only made the sensation  _ much worse _ . He went very, very still, not daring to move. Not far above him, Vos cackled, and said something in Primal Vernacular too fast for Megatron to catch. 

This was a mod that Megatron had  _ not _ known about. He tried to keep his vents even, to resist Tarn’s thrusts against him which would have shoved him forwards onto the barbed spike. Vos wiggled his own hips slightly, pressing the barbs deeper into wounded mesh. They were stiff, with little give to them. They would tear right through the delicate lining of his intake if the small sadist put any effort into it. 

“Vos is  _ full _ of surprises,” Tarn said, leaning over him. He pulled out of Megatron’s valve, “He’s not the only one.” 

Energon and oral lubricants were dripping from Megatron’s mouth, trailing over the rim of the gag. His intake spasmed, autonomic reflex that made things absolutely no better. A smaller servo was touching his valve now, which by a process of elimination had to be Kaon. Given the electrical abilities of that particular mech, Megatron did  _ not _ want him anywhere near his array. 

Electricity crackled. Kaon started by shoving three digits inside of him, which slid in easily after the workout his valve had already taken. Then a fourth, then the thumb, until the entirety of Kaon’s servo was slotted inside him. There was an odd tingle to it, something jumping between plating to mesh that his interface subroutine couldn’t categorise. Megatron kept his joints locked, cables taut, made his servos into fists and squeezed until they creaked. He would not give them the reaction they wanted. He would not let them play his frame like coaxing notes from an instrument. 

Kaon curled his digits, then spread them wide apart, stretching the mesh, tugging particularly at that point where he had torn, where wire was all that was holding him together. There was a brief moment where the light touch of current stopped. Then it shot like a bolt of lightning through his frame, conducted perfectly by the lubricant still soaking his valve, burning delicate neural wiring as it went. Megatron felt himself jerk and tense outside of his control, motor relays activated by sheer raw electricity. He could smell smoke rising from between his plating. It made him pull against the barbs in his mouth and more energon began to trickle, a sharp tang on his glossa that was only a little different to drinking it from a cube.

That little difference was enough. Enough to know this was processed by his own systems, that it was the energon of a living mech. 

More laughter, rising up around him like hissing static. 

He could not even scream, because his vocaliser had crashed and was still rebooting. 

“Again?” Kaon said. 

“He deserves it, doesn’t he?” Tarn replied. 

{ _ Make him squirm and twitch again _ ,} Vos said, slower this time, enough for Megatron to understand him. { _ It feels good. _ }

Panic, rather than any conscious decision, had Megatron fighting it. He kicked backwards, bracing on both servos trying to dislodge Kaon without ripping his own intake to shreds on Vos’ spike. He managed to twist and connect with  _ something _ , but the angle meant he couldn’t get the leverage to do any real damage. Kaon moved with him, and then strong servos grabbed both lower legs and pinned him back down. 

“Oh, was that  _ unpleasant _ ?” Tarn purred. 

“Let go when I give you the signal,” Kaon said. The current must be sufficiently strong to be conducted through his plating and hit whoever was holding him as well - although apparently not through Vos’ barbs. Whatever the signal was, it was non-verbal, because Megatron didn’t get any kind of warning. The shock hit him again, another surge through damaged systems, pushing his circuits to their limit. 

Now energon was trickling down the back of his intake into his fuel tanks, as well as running down over his jaw. Vos made small, chittering sounds of pleasure. Small servos cupped his faceplates, thumbed around the circle of metal in his jaws. Megatron wasn’t being held down anymore, but he felt so sore he wasn’t sure if he  _ could _ move. 

He wasn’t thinking, processor blank as the catalogue of sensation forced its way front and centre. Damage reports cascaded across internal space. A third pulse of current had him almost convulsing, hydraulics firing randomly, plating lifting off his frame and settling again as his entire system briefly reset. 

When he came too, he was lying flat on his belly on the floor. His mouth was full of his own energon - he had torn free of the barbed spike when he had collapsed. The servo in his valve withdrew. 

“That’s all I’ve got right now,” Kaon said, sounding apologetic. “Give me a few breems to recharge.”

“That was  _ more _ than enough,” Overlord said. “I never imagined your group had such talents Tarn.”

“We have plenty of experience in this,” Tarn said, a little snide. Defensive. Megatron lay there taking stock of his injuries. He could smell burning. Dimly, he suspected Nickel was not going to be pleased about all this - had he been considering her disapproval as some kind of shield? That Overlord and his allies wouldn’t hurt him too badly because she might refuse to fix him and spoil their fun? Perhaps he had - foolish of him. He  _ had _ to be prepared for the worst. 

Servos pushed and pulled at his frame, rolling him over onto his back. The chain still linking his cuffed wrists to the ceiling jingled lightly. Someone spread his legs apart - his limbs moved stiffly but smoothly, his manual control of the hydraulics still offline. When would it reboot? Soon, surely soon, he hoped. Digits traced over his plating, then came down in a sharp smack over his aching valve. A few more blows had his array throbbing, another dull pain to join the rest. 

“Why don’t you fill him up?” Tarn suggested. More movement - Megatron was finding it hard to keep track of it. His processor was stalling out, tactical subroutines starting to loop. It might be a consequence of the electrical surges, or simply because there was nothing he could do about any of this. 

A thick spike shoved inside him. No teasing this time, no gentleness. Only a punishing rut, violent thrusts fragging into him. There was a soft clatter, metal on metal - Tesarus’ grinder set on low. Apparently that was linked to his interface drive. 

“I ain’t got any special tricks for ya,” Tesarus said, one servo coming up to clamp over Megatron’s neck cables. “None that wouldn’t spoil the fun anyway. Just your good old fashioned rape. Fill you full of my transfluid, make you all wet with it.” His engine roared, noise mixing with that of the rattling teeth. His vents came faster, pushing heated air down over Megatron’s plating. Some of the nodes in his valve had been blown out by Kaon, but others were still working perfectly well and able to feel the stretch, feel the spike pounding them. 

This was a now-familiar kind of unpleasantness. Try as he might, he could not make the violation mean nothing to him. His spark still rebelled. The haze of going away, of letting it happen, was nowhere to be found. 

Tesarus tightened his grip on Megatron’s neck, though it was doing little more than pinning him down. The lines carrying energon up were buried far too deep to be compressed that way. His spike continued to drive into him, accompanied by moans and cries of pleasure as Tesarus chased his own overload. His hips stuttered as he finally pushed himself over the top, transfluid pulsing deep into Megatron’s valve, wet and hot. Megatron could not keep himself from shuddering, just slightly. 

Slowly, Tesarus withdrew. Digits spread the lips of Megatron’s valve wide as the buzzing camera drones hovered down for their close-up. Another flash of a memory file from the arena. Guilt churned briefly inside him. Overlord had promised to do this to him, hadn’t he. This, which had never occured back then. This, which Megatron had done to so many countless others over the vorns he had spent there. 

“Do you like that?” Overlord said, from near his helm. “Do you want to be filled up? Defiled? Marked and claimed?”

Megatron felt a deep-seated urge to reach out and  _ bite _ , but even if he hadn’t been gagged he could not be exactly sure where Overlord was. Any snarl of rage or threats or pleas, anything he said, could not possibly be taken seriously when he was trapped like this. He could imagine what he looked like, to the cameras. 

Overlord thrust his spike without warning into Megatron’s mouth. It was thick enough to force the pooled mixture of energon and oral lubricant out around it at first, and then down Megatron’s cenching fuel-pipe when the fit was too tight for there to be anywhere else for it to go. Megatron felt his fuel-tank churn, accepting the contaminated energon but unhappy about it. There was pain too as his oral mesh stretched around the intrusion, tearing further along those places where it was pierced. He tried to struggle against it but Overlord was kneeling on his sprawled arms, putting his weight down through servos placed on his chestplates and helm respectively. 

“Tarn?” Overlord asked. “Leave it too long and all you’ll get is sloppy seconds - or thirds, or fourths I suppose. Unless that idea arouses you.”

“What of yourself?” Tarn replied. “I would not wish to deprive you of a full measure of enjoyment.”

Overlord laughed. “I’m more than happy to frag a valve dripping with transfluid.” 

Tarn must have been satisfied with that answer. Once again servos forced Megatron’s thighs apart, and once again a thick spike was sinking into him. Megatron arched his backstrut and tried to throw Overlord off of him, tried to pull away from Tarn, but he had no leverage. 

“You  _ can’t _ win,” Tarn said, and there was something different in his voice. An undertone, a resonance, that slid up and down the audible register. “You are utterly powerless here. You have nothing. You  _ are _ nothing.” Megatron felt it when that resonance found what it was looking for. His whole frame  _ twitched _ , like a plucked wire. His spark sang out in pain. 

“There we are,” Tarn said, satisfied. “I have you now Megatron. I know the frequency of your spark.”

Overlord was fragging his intake, frame a heavy weight over him, but Megatron could no longer think about that pain, that horrid sensation. Tense, all his attention was on Tarn and his voice. He had expected, at some point, that Tarn would try this. He hadn’t known how long it would take for him to find the right resonance, which was the usual reason Tarn didn’t use the ability in the heat of battle. This… this was playing with his spark just as Overlord had already done, only Tarn didn’t even have to physically touch it. 

“It really is exquisite,” Tarn said, and each syllable jangled against Megatron’s neural circuitry like a knife. “How easy it is in the end to play with a mech’s systems. Everything you are is in that bright green light in your chest. Everything you feel, everything you want and need. The wavelengths that set your personality. It holds whatever weakness you have fallen to. It only seems right that I  _ hurt _ you with it.” 

The needle-sharp pain suddenly strengthened, stabbing, burning, spreading throughout the entirety of Megatron’s frame. It was too like the sparkrape, though at least he felt none of Tarn’s emotions along with it. Even so, he was dimly aware of screaming, the sound muffled by the spike in his intake. 

Tarn groaned in pleasure, even that enough to grind against Megatron’s spark. He was fragging deeply into Megatron’s valve, but compared to this violation of his spark he could barely feel it. “The Cause does not need you Megatron,” Tarn said. “The Cause lives without you. The Cause is right in and of itself, not because of you. You have no further use now that you have betrayed us, none save  _ this _ ; a vessel for our pleasure, for our fluid, to scream for our satisfaction, to be whatever  _ we _ want you to be.”

Each word was a further agony, ripping into him. Megatron was lost in it, without control over his frame, over his reactions. He had no idea what he might be doing outside of the prison of his pain. He was broken down to nothing but his spark and the sensations Tarn was forcing upon it. 

Tarn wailed as he overloaded, and Megatron felt as though he was going to come apart himself, splinter into light and nothingness. Yet Tarn had better control over his powers now, after so long using them for the purposes of torture. Abruptly he released his hold on Megatron’s spark. Everything stopped. His frame relaxed limply, the mere absence experienced as a kind of delight. He was still being fragged by Overlord, but Tarn at least was done, spilling himself inside him. 

“How much more can you take before you break?” Overlord said, a whisper directed Megatron’s way. “Where does the last of your strength end?”

Megatron had no answer to that, even in his own processor. 

Tarn pulled out, and Overlord did the same. Megatron did not try to move. He hurt too much. He did not even fight when servos picked him up again in a jingling of chains and started to reposition him. He found his backstrut pressed against something smooth and hot - the front of Helex smelter, it had to be. His legs were spread over Helex’s lap as he was lowered down onto the big mech’s spike. He could feel it trapping the transfluid inside him, an uncomfortable sensation. Helex shifted a little in place, a small rocking motion. “Nice,” he said, appreciatively. His smaller arms encircled Megatron’s waist, one servo reaching down to massage around the rim of his valve where Helex was penetrating him. 

“How much heat can you take?” Helex said, into his audial. The smelter against his backplates was starting to get steadily warmer and warmer. Megatron tried to arch away, but Helex’s other set of arms came around to hold him in place. His internal sensors were starting to protest, warning him about the potential for thermal damage. Helex was not going to have the same problem - he was built for this. All of  _ his _ interior components were heavily shielded and insulated. 

Still, the heat rose. Megatron could imagine the glow of hot metal rising up between them. His protesting system wanted to override his conscious mind, wanted him to  _ move away _ from the source of the threat. He could only hold out against that so long. He started to writhe, to buck against the arms holding him, to move - which was of course what Helex wanted - against the spike impaling him. Circuitry continued to protest, because there was no escape. 

“Scream,” Helex said. “Scream, and I’ll stop it.”

Shame twisted inside him. He would not… Yet he felt exhausted. There had been too much already, from Kaon, from Vos, from Tarn… 

Shuttering his optics behind the blindfold, Megatron let go, let out the mechanimal of instinct that wanted only to react to the pain. He screamed. 

The heat started, mercifully, to ebb. 

“Good pet,” Helex said. His glossa lapped a wet stripe up the side of Megatron’s faceplates. “I could just eat you up.” Sharp dentae nipped at his neck cables. If Helex wanted to play the siphonist, he wasn’t going to find anything to drink from there, not without clawing a deep wound. One of Helex’s small servos tapped against the magnet still holding Megatron’s spike in. “Crunch. Crunch.” Helex grabbed Megatron’s jaw, forced his helm to turn just enough so he could lick into the gap in the gag, lick at the still-seeping mesh. “Don’t think Overlord would be happy with that though,” he continued. “Not with me crunching your spike all up.”

The suggestion was particularly depraved, but Megatron didn’t even have the energy left to react to it, particularly since Helex was right and Overlord wouldn’t let it happen. 

Helex let his helm go. Megatron felt the shift against him as the mech nodded towards someone else. Megatron twitched slightly, as either Kaon or Vos from their size started to finger the rim of his valve, as Helex was still doing. Then they forced a digit inside him, pushing in alongside the thick spike. 

“Don’t zap  _ me _ now,” Helex said, laughing. 

Another digit, stretching him even further. Worn out as his callipers were, they still protested, and Megatron grunted in discomfort. The digits withdrew, but only so that Kaon could rest the head of his spike where they had been. Very slowly, he started to ease it in alongside Helex’s. For a moment Megatron thought it wouldn’t fit, but then with a further push, the head of it slipped inside and Kaon seated himself in Megatron’s valve. 

“So tight,” Kaon said dreamily. 

“Yeah, only ‘cos I’m up here with you,” Helex replied. “You little bots need the help.”

“Careful,” Kaon said, “or I  _ will _ zap you.”

“Just kidding around,” Helex said quickly. 

Kaon started to move, about as energetically as was possible under the circumstances. Megatron did his best not to focus on the full, stretched feeling between his legs. He was still aching throughout his frame - easier to think about that. To lose himself in  _ that _ sensation, and forget about what was being done to him. The dull throb of generalised pain was almost… luxurious, in a way. It was safe. It had no power over him. It was simply the genuine honesty of his own frame reporting to him. 

Time passed. He was not tracking it. He had made a conscious effort not to look at his internal chronometer since these series of rapes had started. He ignored Kaon’s servos clutching him, did not allow himself to think about a current flowing through them, about the pain that could come with that touch. He just vented out the excess heat Helex had dumped into him until finally, finally, Kaon overloaded - though just at the moment of doing so the mech pulled out and striped the front of his abdomen with transfluid instead. By the crackle in the air and the tingle when the fluid hit his plating, there might have been a good reason for that. 

“Thanks,” Helex mumbled. “That always hurts.” Implying this double-teaming was a recurring act. Naturally. 

{ _ Me! _ } Vos said. { _ Me now, me, me, me. I’m so charged up. Need to frag him _ .}

“You be careful too!” Helex said. 

{ _ You like the spines sometimes _ } Vos replied, small servos already roaming over Megatron’s array. He lined himself up and thrust in with a hiss. Megatron held still, dreading the potential for pain, for those barbs to come out again. Given how tightly Vos was pressing into him, every image his processor threw up about it made him want to purge. The anticipation had his system on high-alert once again, reinforcing this swing between passivity and the desperate urge to fight. A cycle of futility. 

The pain didn’t come. Just more fragging, more stretching, and finally more transfluid being dumped into that tight place deep inside him. Dimly, Megatron felt utterly thankful their species did not breed this way, like organics did. Interface was bonding for social cohesion and to assist with system regulation, of which the pleasure of overload was a part. The worst thing it would be possible to pick up from any of his rapists was a virus, and Tarn was more careful than that. 

{ _ YesssI}  _ Vos hissed. { _ Take it, glitch of a traitor, take it! _ }

Then he was out, standing back. Helex adjusted his grip on Megatron’s frame. “Alright,” he said. “That’s enough teasing for me. My turn.”

There was no point in fighting it. No point in doing anything other than going limp and letting Helex do what he wanted - which in this case was to grab him by the hips and bounce him roughly up and down on his spike. His array felt sore and abused, even though that tingling remnant of charge from before was not entirely gone. His own spike was still pent up and aching behind the magnet Overlord had put there. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Helex chanted, in time to his heaving vents, to the pounding he was giving. Still the hum of the camera-drones was ever present in the background. “Frag you Megatron, you piece of slag. Frag you.”

The words meant nothing, or almost nothing. He had already screamed for them, overloaded for them albeit before they started filming. He felt… dirty. More than the physical reality of being unclean, but down to his spark where Tarn had tormented him. What difference did one more load of transfluid make? What difference did humiliating words make? 

Helex overloaded with an almost triumphant shout, prolonged and dumping more fluid into Megatron’s valve than it seemed even a mech of his size should be capable of producing. The way his arms wrapped around Megatron’s frame as he came down from it seemed almost… friendly. It made his plating crawl. 

“I’m gonna enjoy doing this a whole lot more,” Helex murmured into his audial. “Maybe slash you open and we all have a drink next time. Something nice like that.”

“Helex,” Overlord said, a heated edge to his words. “Don’t be greedy.”

“Oh, sorry.” Helex let go of Megatron and pushed him forwards to land on the floor in a sprawl of exhausted limbs. “Almost forgot you hadn’t had your turn.”

Overlord’s digits spread Megatron’s valve. There was a wet trickle, fluid striping the inside of his thighs. Callipers rippled internally, effectively pushing out more of the transfluid. More show for the cameras, Megatron thought wearily. 

“If only you had remained strong,” Overlord said, gloating. “You wouldn’t have been reduced to this. Nothing but a chargesink. A toy. A receptacle for our transfluid. No more worth to you than an interfacing aid.”

Megatron did not react. He was unsure if that was defiance, or simple inability. 

A by-now familiar spike slipped into him, slick and easy. “You’re wet,” Overlord told him. “Dripping. Just right for being fragged.” 

Megatron pressed his helm against the floor. His optics felt hot - there was a little plasma welling up from their edges. He just needed to bear this for a little bit longer. Just a little longer, and it would be done. Over. At least for now. That was the thought he had to hold on to. 

And yes, eventually it did finish. Overlord finished. There was one last splatter of hot transfluid inside him, one last groan of pleasure from a heavy frame over him. That was it, surely. It had to be. Done. Please, done.

Overlord reached over him, and pulled the gag from Megatron’s mouth. Relief was abrupt, and he worked his jaw for a few moments enjoying simply being able to _close_ it. Then Overlord hooked his digits around the magnet over Megatron’s spike-housing, and deactivated it. Shamefully, Megatron’s felt his spike spring loose, still somehow pressurised despite all of this. “The cameras aren’t rolling any longer,” Overlord said, bending back down over him. “We can wait to show them how much of a slut you really are.” His servo closed around Megatron’s spike, while the other pressed fingers into his valve, massaging the mess of transfluid into his mesh. Stimulating his nodes. 

“Face it Megatron,” Overlord said. “No matter how much we hurt you and made you scream,  _ this _ shows that you still enjoyed it. Wanted it.” He pumped Megatron’s spike, slow and tight and… and  _ good _ . 

“No,” Megatron said, unable to stop himself, too  _ tired _ to stop himself. “Please, stop. I don’t. I don’t want it.”

“No?” Overlord’s servo didn’t pause. He had four fingers pumping in and out of Megatron’s valve now. His charge was rising, again. This was… this was… How could his frame respond like this? After everything they had just  _ done _ to him? How could it betray him like this? 

He was aware he was whimpering, as Overlord drove his charge higher and higher. His spike was tense and ready in Overlord’s servo. Then, finally, his overload took him, a full discharge of energy from spike and valve both. He twitched and writhed against his tormentor’s grip. 

“Good toy,” Overlord told him. “Well done.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once a recording is out in the world, you can't take it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the 'Big Conversation' section, several usernames are taken from Enfilade's fun fic of the same name: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932637

Getaway had been waiting for a transmission from Tarn to confirm Megatron’s death for the last _three megacycles_ now, and it was starting to worry him that he hadn’t heard anything. He thought he’d been very clear what he wanted from them as a price for handing Megatron’s location over, which was for them to offline with prejudice Rodimus, Megatron, and all their treacherous, quisling supporters. Even with the Galactic Council as a backup… 

Should he comm them? Did he dare? His hold on the rest of the crew felt… tenuous. They didn’t all know the full truth about the mutiny. If he attempted to contact Tarn then the truth about his connection with the DJD might slip out, and he couldn’t risk that happening. 

“Hey, Captain.” Blaster’s voice got his attention. Getaway looked up from the Captain’s chair. His communications officer was looking over at him with concern. “We’re picking up something kinda strange. A broad channel broadcast, right across the Galactic Interlink. It don’t say on it what it is. You want me to put it up onscreen?”

It sounded utterly irrelevant to their mission, which was exactly the kind of thing that he had always hated Rodimus for paying attention to. On the other servo it would take his mind off things, and it wasn’t as though they _had_ to act on it. 

“Go ahead,” he said. 

Blaster put it up. The screen flickered on, and it was Tarn’s face - or rather, the mask concealing his features - which appeared. Getaway sat up in his chair. What was this? Could it be something to do with Megatron? A broadcast proclaiming his death, perhaps? 

“If you’re watching this, you probably know who I am,” Tarn said, touching his servo to the Decepticon badge on his chestplates. “If you don’t - perhaps you’re an organic, or have managed to stay well clear of the millions-year-long war of Cybertron - then I am called Tarn. I hunt down and punish those who have betrayed the cause of the Decepticons. You may have recently heard that Megatron, our former leader, foreswore us. He betrayed us. He became… an Autobot. Our mortal enemies.”

It _was_ about Megatron. Getaway’s servos clenched. His vents came shallow and excited. Was this finally it? Was this going to be… some kind of recording of Megatron’s execution?

“My team and I have been looking for Megatron for some time,” Tarn continued. “He is a traitor to our cause, and thus, he must be made to pay the same price as all other traitors who have come before him. His prior rank is no excuse. His role in leading us is no excuse. The cause is bigger than any one mech. It must be, else it is no more than a cult of personality. With some assistance, my Justice Division finally tracked Megatron down. He has been captured. He is going to suffer - I promise you that. He will receive the traitor’s due.”

Tarn stepped aside, as the camera panned slightly out. In the centre of the room that was revealed was Megatron, hanging by his wrists from the ceiling on the end of a sturdy chain, dangling so that his pedes only barely brushed the ground. He was held by stasis cuffs, and his frame bore the marks of recent repair. A blindfold of organic cloth covered his optics. 

“Loyal Decepticons,” Tarn continued, “ _former_ Decepticons, Autobots, Neutrals, even pathetic organics. We are broadcasting this to you because we want you to understand something. You cannot hide from us. You cannot run from us. We are the Cause, and the Cause still lives. The war is _not_ over. Peace is a lie. We _will_ rise again. Let Megatron’s fate be a warning to all who would dare to oppose us. The full recording will be hosted at the following Interlink address, to view at your leisure. This announcement will be broadcast on repeat until further notice. The Justice Division does _hope_ you enjoy it.”

The screen cut to black, with an Interlink address displayed in clean, flat white, and stopped there.

“What in the name of Primus!” Blaster said, optics wide. “I thought we left Megatron on the Necroplanet with Rodimus and the others! How did the DJD get ahold of him?” He swivelled round quickly in his chair. “We gotta make contact!” he said. “I know we left them there for good reasons, but it wasn’t like we wanted anything bad to happen to them!”

Getaway hesitated, exchanging a brief glance with Atomiser, thinking quickly. Probably they were all dead by now. Probably. There was always a chance though that someone _would_ pick up on the other end of the line - perhaps even one of the DJD, if they had remained on the planet after capturing Megatron. Who on the bridge would support him if the whole story came out? Atomiser would, obviously. Blaster wouldn’t, Riptide probably wouldn’t, Thunderclash _really_ wouldn’t.

“Are we sure this is even real?” he asked. “It makes sense that Tarn wants Megatron dead, but this could be fake. Something he put together to make him look good. It’s only a short clip.” 

“Then let’s look at the whole thing,” Blaster replied. “If those monsters have hurt Rodimus and the others…” His digits flew over the console, getting up the hosting site the DJD’s link led to. 

Again, the screen flickered and resolved into an image of Megatron. It was the same as before, his frame bound and hanging in chains. It seemed to be an almost immediate continuation on from Tarn’s… trailer? Advertisement? Someone was clapping. Getaway stiffened when the culprit walked into frame. Overlord. That was… not good. Didn’t Tarn want Overlord dead as well? Why was _he_ even there? 

“Very nice,” Overlord said. “And look! The star of our show is hanging here waiting for us! Let’s put him out of his misery.” He strode over to Megatron, the camera following him. It must be attached to some kind of aerial drone. He forced Megatron’s mouth open and shoved in some kind of wide-set gag, more of a rim of steel. “No biting,” Overlord said mockingly, and patted Megatron’s faceplates.

Getaway felt the sharp shock as he realised what was happening. This wasn’t an execution. He wasn’t going to see Megatron die here. The DJD meant to make him _suffer_ first. They were going to rape him. 

Strange emotion curled inside his spark. His fans tried to activate, but he denied them. He couldn’t help but find the idea arousing - though he shouldn’t. It wasn’t exactly Primely behaviour. But didn’t Megatron, of all mechs, deserve it? He was the one responsible for the war. For the countless deaths, for the pain, for yes, the battlefield rape and the rape of prisoners that had happened admittedly on both sides but more so from Decepticons. Wasn’t this just payback? Surely it would be fine to watch this, then? Surely it was acceptable to… to _like_ the idea of what was going to happen?

Megatron chains were loosened - he was dropped to the floor. Overlord gestured, and one of the other DJD mechs stepped forwards, the one with the grinder in his torso. He gave Megatron a couple of blows, to the helm, to the abdomen, then knelt down and slid his modesty panel back. His spike sprang free, rapidly pressurising. 

If the others on the bridge hadn’t worked it out by this point, the reality of the recording became suddenly unmistakable. 

“Turn that off!” Thunderclash ordered, turning to Blaster highly agitated. “This is… _turn it off_.”

Blaster seemed to be on the verge of cognitive crash. It took him several astroseconds to process what Thunderclash had said, then he was fumbling for the controls. As the camera zoomed in on the spike shoving forwards into Megatron’s intake, the screen went dark. 

“I… I…” he stuttered. “It looked real. Since that was what we were tryin’ ta establish...”

Getaway stood up. “I need to not be here,” he said, and made his way off the bridge before anyone could react. He was sure they would assume he was shaken by the contents of the recording. That he didn’t want them to see him upset, or perhaps feeling guilty for having some part in this coming to pass. Good. He didn’t want them to have any idea about the _real_ reason, which was that he was desperately aroused. He wanted, no, _needed_ , to see more. 

He managed not to run back to his quarters, but it was a near thing. Inside he almost fell onto the berth, grabbing one of his personal datapads. His servos shook slightly as he called up the snippet Tarn had been broadcasting, following the link to the video proper. He skipped it over the first dozen astroseconds to the point they had left off, and had to shove his fist against his mask to muffle the moan that even that couldn’t entirely hide. Oh, oh _yes_ . This was what he wanted. What Megatron deserved. He knew he should have been angry at Tarn for not just finishing the glitch off, but he couldn’t possibly be. Why hadn’t _he_ thought of this? 

Getaway popped his panel and started to tease himself, imagining that was _his_ spike on the screen raping Megatron’s intake. This was going to be _satisfying_. 

\----

Starscream stared at the screen in mute shock. He kept thinking to himself that he should turn it off, turn away at least, but there was something about it that wouldn’t let him look away. He was vaguely aware that he had his servos clamped over his mouth, fighting down the churning in his fuel-pump, the urge to purge. 

“You know you don’t have to watch this,” Bumblebee said next to him. 

Starscream shuttered his optics briefly. When he opened them again it was still happening. It was still real. 

“I should be… This should be satisfying,” he said. His voice sounded flat. Unlike himself. 

“Why on Cybertron would it be _satisfying_?” Bumblebee said, throwing up his servos in disbelief. “Look, please turn it off. You can tell yourself it’ll still be there if you want to go back to it later.” 

He was right. And it was just enough to let Starscream slam a servo down on the console in his office and shut the horrible recording off. The screen went blank. He looked down and tried to keep his ventilations calm and even. 

“So… why should it be satisfying?” Bee asked cautiously. “That’s… a dark thing to say. I know you can be an utter bastard at times, but I wouldn’t think you would find… forcing someone like that acceptable.”

“Do you _have_ to use those weird earth terms?” Starscream muttered, taking refuge in old arguments. “What even is a ‘bastard’? Anyway, you know what he did to me. It’s not like I haven’t talked about it before. I brought it up at the trial, remember? Or was your ghostly self not around for that?” 

Bee kindly didn’t comment on whether or not he really existed. How _nice_ of him, for once. “Did Megatron ever…” He paused, trying to find the right words. Ultimately, it was easiest to be blunt. “Did Megatron ever rape you?” he asked. 

“No,” Starscream had to allow. He hadn’t. Not really. Which didn’t mean all of their interfacing, or even the majority of it, had been _good_ . Mostly Starscream had just gotten so _angry_ with him, so _frustrated_ , and then he had tried to prove himself, or tried to take over, tried some plot or plan, and Megatron had either slapped him around some or he had taken him back to his quarters and bent him over his berth and _fragged_ the loyalty back into him. 

It wasn’t as though Starscream had _complained_ about it at the time. It had been thrilling, all that rough power pinning him down, that passion and energy turned entirely towards _him_ for once rather than distracted by the war, by the Autobots, by the Cause. He just had the idea, sometimes and more so now than back then, that most relationships didn’t involve one partner putting the other in the medbay quite so often. Didn’t involve someone breaking your struts for daring to voice a Pit-damned _opinion_ now and then! 

“So what is it that’s really bothering you about your reaction?” Bumblebee asked. 

“I shouldn’t feel _sorry_ for him,” Starscream snarled. “It’s… it’s _kind_ of like getting revenge, isn’t it? Much more than spilling my spark out at that pitiful excuse for a trial and then not even getting to see them snuff him out afterwards. All because of _Optimus Prime_ \- why should _he_ get to decide what justice is? He’s a Prime! It’s a complete contradiction of terms!”

“So… you think Megatron is getting what he deserves?” Bumblebee ventured hesitantly. 

“If _I_ had been the one to sentence him…” Starscream stopped. He hadn’t really gotten a chance to complain before how angry the outcome of Megatron’s trial had made him, but then this didn’t really count, did it? He was either talking to a ghost or to himself, and neither was a good option. He still felt… upset in a way he didn’t really understand. “I wouldn’t have organised anything like _this_ ,” he finished, knowing he sounded a bit defeated, hating that fact. “Not rape. I mean. It’s a thing. That happens. Just… not to mechs like us. Even if he is a total loser now he’s still _Megatron_. He… he should have been able to look after himself if he was going to do such a damn foolish thing as join the Autobots in the first place!”

“So do you still care about him?”

“No,” Starscream said automatically, then took the time to actually think about the question. “Not… _care_ . I want him out of my life. I want him as far away from me as possible, since I can’t have him offline. I… I don’t want to have to _worry_ about him any more, about him coming back, about getting pulled back into his orbit…” He was aware he was saying more than he meant to, _showing_ more than he meant to in the way his wings flattened down against his back. 

But it didn’t count. He wasn’t actually talking to another mech. So it was fine. 

“What am I going to do about _this_?” he whispered. 

“Why do you have to do anything?”

“Because I’m the leader of Cybertron!” Starscream replied, throwing his servos up. “Because you heard Tarn - he doesn’t accept that things have changed! He _certainly_ doesn’t accept _my_ authority! He’s wanted to kill me for vorns!” 

“And because something like that should never happen to anymech?” Bumblebee ventured. 

“Don’t push your luck,” Starscream told him. 

\----

gli.thebigconversation.decepticon.org

Board: Hot Topics

Thread: Megatron’s New ‘Sex Tape’

[xFragEmAllx} you guys seen this slag yet? c’mon, you gotta have, right, if you spend any time at all on the interlink. i wanna *talk* about this

[H2Whoa] what’s a ‘sex tape’

[xFragEmAllx] oh sorry, organic term. ‘sex’ means interface. 

[sharpasatack] don’t you think it’s kinda fragged up calling it that then? cos uh… don’t know if you’ve noticed but our former tyrant doesn’t seem to be enjoying it

[H2Whoa] hey, can you post the link so i can watch it and see what you’re talking about?

[xFragEmUpx} oh sorry, here

[Interrogatacopter] oh yeah fragemup, if you hadn’t posted about this i was gonna have to. this is *amazing*. i’m jerkin it to this right now

[sharpasatack] aren’t we better than this?

[SadSong] since when?

[sharpasatack] look, megatron abandoned us, yeah, i get it. it hurts. i don’t like it any more than any of you. that doesn’t mean we should be encouraging *this* sort of behaviour

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] i second that - the djd are terrifying! i don’t want anything to do with them or what they’re doing

[sharpasatack] thanks for the support. nice to see there are still some decepticons out there with *some* sense of honour

{xFragEmUpx} ooooh, playing the *honour* card. go ahead, pretend like you’re better than the rest of us. like you never did anything the least bit fragged-up during the war

[blindedbythelight] speaking of the war, doesn’t tarn’s speech bother you guys at all? he’s talking like he wants to start the whole thing back up. i’m *tired* of fighting. i don’t want to go back to living like that

[H2Whoa] urh, all of you are such party-slaggers. can’t you just sit back and enjoy the show we’ve been given? 

[Interrogatacopter] yeah, which bit was everyone’s favourite? 

[shinyasa] uh, maybe it’s just because i’m new here, but is this *allowed*? Isn’t posting rape videos against the site’s T&C or something?

[Interrogatacopter] lol yeah you *must* be new. this. is. a. decepticon. site! Pit, there’s a whole board dedicated to this kind of slag. you never checked out the ‘war crimes’ section yet?

[xFragEmUpx] you mean that place that’s been kind of dead since the end of the war?

[Interrogatacopter] well, they can’t be *war* crimes anymore, can they? Just regular crimes, depending on jurisdiction. anyway, bunch of cowards don’t want to incriminate themselves in case they want to get *jobs* on starscream’s new cybertron

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] oh slag, that’s a whole ‘nother topic. you wanna talk about starscream Interrogatacopter, go to the thread about it. glad *i* don’t have to deal with that whole mess

[architect_of_aggression] speaking of, i kinda wondered if this thread should be posted in ‘war crimes’ instead of here. i know the two of *you* don’t give a slag about war-trauma, but *some* bots don’t want to have to see this kind of depravity on the main board. we have a place for this so we can avoid it if we want

[666er(mod)] okay i’ve been summoned. lemme think. this thread can stay here for now, but i’ll archive it in war crimes later when it isn’t newsworthy anymore. that seem like a good compromise?

also, architect, i get it. the war was rough for everyone. i don’t know if you’re talking from concern or personal experience, but yeah we all know that sometimes if you ever got captured by the autobots you might get raped. just remember we gave them back as good as we got! that’s part of why ‘war crimes’ exists on this site, for the vindication of sweet, sweet revenge

[Interrogatacopter] lol, just shouldn’ta gotten captured

[666er(mod)] watch it Interrogatacopter

[3in1] hey, just to get back to the topic of megatron taking it in every hole, i’ve been looking over the footage more carefully

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] lol okay creep

[3in1] and right at the start if you zoom in you can kind of see something on megatron’s thighs here - i think it looks like valve lubricant

[xFragEmUpx] you saying he was *enjoying* this? have you even watched the whole recording? electrocution. barbed spikes. those djd mechs are kinky fragging glitches

[Interrogatacopter] hey, maybe megatron’s been a valve mech this whole time and we just never knew it 

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] and being a valve mech has *what* to do with it?

[Interrogatacopter] uhhh, cos valve mechs are total sluts for interface, duh? everyone knows that. they’re so hungry for spike they’ll follow along after the mech that gives it to ‘em like… like those earth things. dogs. 

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] what era are *you* living in, the time of the thirteen primes? get your attitude adjusted! I don’t even know the last time i heard such an aft-backwards idea - and i’m known for having bad ideas, so i should know!

[Interrogatacopter] looks like we found the valve mech here, am i right?

[51Mf1r3_+h3_d3A+hbR1nG3r] frag you

[Interrogatacopter] *cupping my spike* any time shareware, any time

[sharpasatack] you’re all disgusting. this isn’t what the cause is about! getting off to rape, even if it *is* megatron…

[xFragEmUpx] urh, shut up. nobody cares about your opinions

[SadSong] oh, btw, look what i found. megatron screaming compilation. there’s even an extended 83 cycle loop version as well!

[Interrogatacopter] nice

[xFragEmUpx] nice

[sharpasatack] you guys are sick. i hope you enjoy getting devoured by unicron in the afterspark

[Interrogatacopter] pft, sure


	16. Revenge/Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Megatron's torment comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the delay in this chapter. I've been camping with no electricity or internet for the last two weeks, and I had intended to get this done before that, but didn't quite succeed. 
> 
> As I mentioned before, the sequel to this will be posted as a separate fic, so folks can just go straight to it if they want.

It had been a little over three megacycles since Megatron saved all of their lives. Rodimus couldn’t stop thinking about that. Three megacycles. It seemed like hardly any time at all, and yet now in the aftermath the cycles were starting to stretch on and on as they came down from the terrified peak of certain death and waited for someone to come pick them up from the Necrobot’s world.

There wasn’t much to  _ do _ here now other than think. 

Rodimus had never been the kind of mech to reflect much about the possibility of being offlined. In Nyon, your functioning was on a knife edge anyway unless you were lucky, with violence and drug use and poverty simple facts of existence. Then there had been a war, and it was still strange to have managed to survive  _ that _ when so many others hadn’t. Peace was hard to get used to. The quest had brought back a little of that spice of danger… 

Even so, Rodimus had never before actually  _ known _ , for  _ sure _ , that he was going to die. The DJD had them pinned down in the fortress, had even been so kind as to set the time of their promised execution for dusk. Rodimus had been thinking of fighting, of going out in a blaze of glory rather than waiting to be killed and then… 

Nothing. The DJD and their allies had left. There hadn’t seemed to be any reason for it. 

That reason had only come to light when Ravage, of all mechs, had spoken up. After it had become apparent that there was a mech missing from their number. Megatron. 

How dare  _ he  _ decide to be a martyr? That wasn’t the job of a tyrant! Of a warlord! If anything it was the job of a Prime, and Rodimus should have been the one… 

Only that wouldn’t have worked. He wasn’t the one Tarn wanted. Megatron had known there was one way out of the trap they were in, and he had… made a decision. An Autobot decision, if there ever was one. It  _ would _ be just like that stubborn, hard-helmed, determined mech to choose this time and this way to prove once and for all that he really deserved that red badge on his chest. 

Rodimus could still hardly believe he was gone. Offline. Spark snuffed. Hadn’t they thought that about Megatron far too many times in the past? Didn’t that glitch always have some kind of backup plan, some way of surviving, of coming back later to prove them all wrong? It had hardly been any time at all! He could still show up!

And in the meantime Rodimus had to deal with figuring out his next step. He felt… raw. Open. Tender at spark. He had been prepared to go down fighting,with his friends beside him. There had been a final message they’d prepared to send to the stars, a plea for help and a eulogy at the same time. Instead it was just… a request for someone to come and pick them up. Rodimus had been sparing about the details. It didn’t seem, any of it, like something you tried to explain to just anyone. 

In the three megacycles since then, he had organised for the Necrobot to be given a funeral, had welcomed a bunch of mostly strangers kidnapped through time and locked in stasis for millenia, and then… waited. Waited for a ship to come, waited for the pain inside his chestplates to settle down, waited to get revenge. At least he had Drift around to talk to again. At least that. 

Rodimus vented out. He had holed himself up in his room a few cycles ago, not feeling much like interacting with anyone. He thought he might recharge, but now he didn’t feel like it. He had gotten trapped in his thoughts again, and clearly  _ that _ was no good. He reached for a datapad. With the DJD gone whatever had been jamming their communications was gone with them. There had to be something he could distract himself with on the Galactic Interlink. 

It didn’t take him long to find Tarn’s broadcast. 

Not much longer after  _ that _ , Rodimus burst into the room Brainstorm was using as a temporary lab waving the datapad in the air, and shouted, “He’s alive! They didn’t kill him! He’s  _ alive _ !”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Brainstorm said, briefly juggling a plasma torch in his servos before managing to find the off switch and putting it aside. “ _ Who _ is alive?”

“Megatron,” Rodimus said, shoving the datapad over. “Look. Tarn didn’t kill him. He captured him. We still have time - we can rescue him.”

Brainstorm played the short clip through, and looked up with an expression of deep concern. “Rodimus… have you actually gone and watched the rest of this? You know, the vid they link to?”

“No, I came straight here,” Rodimus said, and took a moment to actually stop and  _ think _ for the first time since seeing Megatron alive. His spark sank. “You mean… it might just be an execution vid?”

“I don’t know  _ what _ it might be,” Brainstorm said. “Given that we’re talking about the Decepticon Justice Division, it could be anything, but it  _ will _ be terrible.”

“So let’s watch it,” Rodimus said, servos balling into fists, trying to prepare himself. “But if he’s still alive though, can you help me find  _ some way _ to rescue him? I know not everyone is as keen to get off this rock as I am, but there  _ has _ to be a way to leave sooner, right?”

Brainstorm nodded. “We’re not leaving anyone behind, especially not in the servos of mechs like Tarn and his crew.”

Rodimus relaxed very slightly, though the tension still had his cables tingling inside his frame. He took the datapad back and navigated to the link Tarn had indicated and started it running. He jerked back and almost dropped it when  _ Overlord _ walked into the frame. 

“Ohhh, that’s not good,” Brainstorm said quietly. 

Rodimus did his best to keep his vents steady and even. That became harder and harder once it became apparent exactly what method of torture the DJD intended to use on Megatron. After a few moments he hit the pause button and turned away, struggling with the urge to purge. Next to him, Brainstorm made an unhappy sound. 

“I’ll figure something out,” he promised. “Find a way to track them down, maybe a teleporter? Get Megatron out of there anyway. As soon as possible.”

“Still don’t know if they leave him alive at the end of this,” Rodimus managed to say. His spark was churning in time with his fuel-pump. This was far worse than dying a martyr. And - the thought struck him suddenly - if  _ they _ could see this, so could a whole lot of other people, mechanical and organic alike. He dragged a digit over the datapad’s screen, forcing the vid to skip along towards the end. Forced himself not to look away from the flashes of horrible imagery in case he missed the moment of potential execution. 

The recording cut out on a shot of Overlord’s smirk and Megatron’s slightly shuddering frame, burnt-circuit smoke rising from between plating and joints, a mess of transfluid dripping between his thighs. Still online. That was what mattered. Still online. 

Rodimus felt barely in control of himself. He turned, dropping the pad, and punched the wall, once, twice, a little flicker of flame bursting out the third and final time. He leant in and rested the crests of his helm against the metal. Some part of him thought he should have known. Hadn’t he just been thinking that maybe Megatron was still alive? If they hadn’t assumed… If  _ he _ hadn’t assumed… 

“Please Brainstorm,” he said. “Please find a way to get us to him. To get him out.”

“I  _ will _ ,” Brainstorm said, the same horror in his voice. “You should… go and tell the others though. That he isn’t dead. Ravage at the very least deserves to know.”

“I won’t tell them the details,” Rodimus said firmly, not looking up. Perhaps if he kept his optics fixed on bare metal he could forget what he had just seen. “Maybe they’ll find out on their own but… Megs wouldn’t want them to know, would he. Wouldn’t want anyone to see…  _ that _ .”

“Yeah,” Brainstorm agreed. “Which is half of why they did it.”

\----

Megatron was vaguely aware of other frames moving in the room around him, of the members of the DJD leaving, of Overlord remaining behind. He was unable to focus on them, for all his systems screamed threat warnings at him. He ached in every part of himself. Frame, spark, processor. Every circuit and cable and strut. Energon levels were still at 51% but he felt utterly weary. Too many forced overloads. Too much damage, mostly from the shocks Kaon had put through him. Everything felt slightly fuzzy and unsynchronised, reality stuttering around him. 

A servo trailed over his backstrut. His plating shivered and twitched at the touch. 

“What a mess you are,” Overlord said, and Megatron could not quite hold back the flinch at the sound of his voice. “A delightful, wonderful mess.” His servos were almost gentle as he picked Megatron up and let him fall onto the padded surface of the berth. His frame was warm against plating as he took his place alongside him, in that by-now-familiar mockery of intimacy. Megatron did not resist, staying limp. He was not sure he would have been able to move if he’d tried, but the desire was not there. Just emptiness, and pain. He let his optics remain unfocused. Let things happen around him. Overlord was still touching him, dragging digits over the scars and burns and other marks that had accumulated since Megatron’s capture. 

“Have I broken you?” Overlord asked him. “Or is that willfulness of yours merely in waiting, resting, ready to come out again?” 

Now wasn’t  _ that _ the question? Megatron didn’t have the answer to it. If he even tried to think beyond the narrow pain of the now a sudden great wave of fear gripped his spark and made him shy away from it. He had thought Overlord predictable in his brutality - he had not considered the unpredictability he could hold in the details. 

Some time passed. He was still ignoring his internal chronometer. He did not want to know any more how long he had been trapped like this. How long - or  _ short _ \- a time it had been. The door to Overlord’s room hissed open and closed, and the heavy frame against his own shifted slightly. 

“Am I doing house calls now?” Nickel asked, voice drifting up from the side of the berth. Again something in Megatron flinched, feeling the memory of pain and helplessness, but outwardly he did not move. Overlord reached over him, and there was the sound of movement as Nickel was helped up. Small servos rested against his plating. 

_ Please don’t touch me _ , Megatron wanted to say, but he had already stooped to begging once already this cycle. He would not do it again - a useless vow he knew, since Overlord had already proved he could force that out of him already. But perhaps some shred of strength  _ did _ remain. 

Nickel vented out. Her diagnostic cable prodded at one of Megatron’s medical ports - the urge to move away was suddenly too strong to be denied but Overlord was already there and pinning him down. 

“Now, now Megatron,” Overlord said. “This is for your own good.” 

Nickel was already in his systems. Megatron tried to brace himself for a repeat of before, of being paralysed and at her mercy, but she left his motor control alone this time. She really was just running a diagnostic scan. 

“There’s a moderate amount of damage to his sensorimotor circuitry,” Nickel said. “Not enough to warrant a full-frame refit at this point though. Self-repair will get at some of it over the next few decacycles, which should be enough for  _ your _ purposes. If Kaon keeps playing though, at some point I would need to do a refit, but we should be back somewhere with a fully stocked medbay by then. As to the rest… the heat damage isn’t too severe, I can patch up his intake easily enough, and you got his valve well lubed and relaxed enough before you started in on him properly that my stitch-job held up just fine. Honestly, I’d expected worse.”

“Perhaps we simply weren’t trying hard enough,” Overlord suggested, and Nickel laughed. 

Megatron shuttered his optics and did his best to calm his juddering spark. At least this meant he would not be forced to endure Nickel’s own particular brand of torture again. Not yet, at any rate. 

Nickel rapped hard with her fist against his chest plating to get his attention. “Hey. You going to hold still while I fix your intake, or do I have to override you again?” 

“I won’t move,” Megatron said, forcing his vocaliser online. It still came out rough and full of static, legacy of what Kaon had done. 

“One twitch…” Nickel said threateningly, and clambered up close to his helm. “Now, open up.”

\----

Deathsaurus was more than prepared at this point to leave the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ for good. Joining Tarn in this alliance had always had the sense of a means to an end for both of them and no more. There was no camaraderie there. No fellowship, and only the slightest shred of shared purpose; Megatron’s death. Yet even that had not come to pass. 

He did not approve of what Tarn had chosen to do. Even less did he approve of this alliance with Overlord, who must surely set the galactic standard for monstrosity. The fact that Megatron had tolerated such depraved mechs in the ranks of the Decepticons had been part of the reason Deathsaurus had left all that time ago, and he had agreed to Tarn’s proposal now only to save the lives of his own crew. They disgusted him. Yes, Megatron was a threat. Yes, Megatron had betrayed the Cause - but not now, not merely by taking up the red Autobot badge. The betrayal had been when he decided the lives of his followers were worth nothing to him, when he broke the tenets of togetherness and shared struggle against oppression that were the keystone of his own writings. Of the Decepticon Cause itself. 

It was ironic, that Tarn was part of the rot, yet thought himself worthy to judge others. 

If Deathsaurus had his way, Megatron would have been offlined at the first available opportunity, and then they could all have moved on with their lives. Not this… the torture. The rape. The mockery of decency. It made his plating itch, and now it had even spread to hurt his own people. Poor Razoraptor. 

So yes, he was more than pleased that they were now mere cycles away from from rendezvous with his Warworld, and thus mere cycles away from leaving this Pit-damned vessel. 

Tarn and Overlord had come to see him off. There was a smug satisfaction about them that was particularly grating, but Deathsaurus refused to let them see how bothered by it he was. 

“Such a pity to see you go,” Overlord said, and it was hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic. After what he had done to Razoraptor, perhaps he viewed Deathsaurus and all his soldiers as nothing more than toys he hadn’t gotten around to playing with yet. 

“Your role in our alliance was appreciated,” Tarn added. That too was ironic, considering they had not really been needed in the end. On the other servo, perhaps their presence and threat to Megatron’s Autobot allies had been enough to drive Megatron out of his bolthole to meet with Tarn and thus to be captured. Deathsaurus had been told so little about that sequence of events that it was difficult to judge. 

“This settles the matter of the List, as per our terms,” Deathsaurus said, hoping Tarn did not intend to renege on his promise at the last moment. 

After a moment, Tarn nodded. “We will not pursue you, or any aboard your Warworld,” he said. “We have no further quarrel with you.”

“Then forgive me, but I hope we never see each other again.”

Overlord laughed, and Deathsaurus fixed him with a piercing glare. 

“I say that not only for my own benefit,” he snapped, mechanimal instincts urging him towards violence, barely held in check by his better sense. “If I ever see either of you two again, we will not be parting on such good terms. Or online, for that matter.”

Overlord looked at him, disbelieving. “Are you really trying to threaten us?” he asked, not taking the prospect at all seriously. 

“You disgust me,” Deathsaurus said. “I cannot condone what you have done. You may take it as a threat or not, but I am not without my resources. If I see you again, I’m going to assume you’ve come looking for violence, and I  _ will _ act accordingly.”

“That  _ is _ a pity,” Tarn said. “There is still the Decepticon Empire to rebuild, and you would have been a great boon to that.”

“I’ll build my own realm out here on the Galactic Rim,” Deathsaurus replied. “Whatever  _ you _ intend to build, I want nothing to do with it.”

“Your loss,” Tarn replied. 

\----

Once Nickel’s repairs were completed, Overlord left him alone for a while. The stasis cuffs remained on his wrists, and the door was surely still locked, but other than that it seemed Overlord no longer cared about leaving him chained. This was the second time now he had been left free to roam. 

Megatron sat up, wincing at every movement. His systems were still aching from the electricity that had been poured through them, but it was starting to ease very slightly. He was dirty. Paint transfers, flecks of his own dried energon, valve lubricants and transfluid streaking the inside of his thighs… It was suddenly too much to bear. Too much to leave there. He stumbled on legs that were only half-way obeying his commands to the door to the washracks, half afraid it would not even open. To his relief, it slid aside. 

Megatron turned the solvent on to full, not even waiting for it to heat up before stepping under it. The liquid sheeted over his plating, over his bent helm, and he put his servos flat against the wall and tried not to think. Tried to lose himself in the sensation. As the warmth started to build he relaxed into it - and then all at once the heat was too much. It was the smelter firing up against him. He jerked backwards out of the spray and slapped the temperature control to cold. His vents came heavy and ragged. 

No. Not that. 

He readjusted. Cool. Something in the middle, that would evoke no bad memories. 

As the energon and other marks started to wash away, Megatron relaxed slightly again. He was still going to have to wash out his valve, and he was not looking forward to that at all, but it had to be done. Tentatively, he reached down. Slid his servo between his legs, feeling for the place where his modesty panel no longer was. His digits touched the edge of his spike housing and for a moment he felt Overlord’s servos on him, forcing the overload out of him. He snatched his own servo away and then stood for a moment shaking himself out of it. No. It wasn’t the same. 

Still, the next time he reached lower, skirting around that area. His fingers found the soft rim of his valve, feeling slightly swollen from all of the abuse it had been taking. Sticky, dried fluids were still present there, and he did his best to angle his pelvis under the spray of solvent and scrub at them. He did not want to do what Overlord had done to him the last time, and wash his valve out directly. Just… enough to feel clean. 

It took some time. Even then, when he was objectively clean, he didn’t  _ feel _ clean. 

Megatron put his backstrut against the wall and slumped down onto the floor. That same heaviness and weariness as before was coming over him. What would be the point in going back to the berth? Why move from this spot at all? Overlord would come back for him either way. It didn’t matter. 

He would just stay here under the solvent for a little while longer. 

\----

At some point, Megatron must have slipped into recharge. He hadn’t needed it, strictly speaking, but after the stress of the last few cycles and the demands self-repair was putting on his systems, his frame apparently had taken whatever opportunity it could get. He woke up with a start to a stimulus he couldn’t initially process. Then he realised it was the spray of the solvent hose splashing on and then off his faceplates. He reset his optics, and saw that Overlord was standing over him, moving the spray back and forth. 

“Wake up Megatron,” he said, smiling. “The megacycle isn’t over yet.”

Megatron’s spark sank. He kept still. If Overlord wanted him out of here, he was going to make him move his frame himself. 

Overlord made a thoughtful noise, then left the washracks momentarily. He returned with the length of chain and clipped it back onto the stasis cuffs. “You can walk like a mech, or be pulled on your belly like a mechanimal,” he said. 

Megatron simply stared at him. He would not play this game. 

Overlord shrugged. “As you wish,” he said, and tugged. Megatron did his best to resist, but he had little leverage and his system was too damaged to use his full strength. He was pulled forwards, dragged out into the main room. Overlord moved him over to the centre and reached upwards to loop the chain over the ceiling beam once again. Gradually, Megatron found himself winched up to hang suspended by his wrists, a familiar experience by now.

“Deathsaurus and his band of followers are out of the way,” Overlord remarked. “I suppose that leaves me the question of what to do next. Do I follow Tarn around so I can continue to call on his services to train my new pet? Do I strike out on my own, as I’ve grown used to? Do I make Tarn follow  _ me _ \- though that sounds like a lot of work I can barely be bothered with. What do you think?”

Megatron doubted he actually wanted his opinion. Then the importance of what Overlord had just said sank in. 

Deathsaurus was gone. He had returned to his Warworld along with all of the other innocent mechs that had been on board this ship. Only Overlord and the DJD still remained. Only the monsters. 

If there was ever going to be a time to reach for the black hole, it was now. 

Did he have the strength to do it? Would his energy reserves stretch that far? They would have to. He could not afford to wait any longer. If he did not act now, something might happen to prevent him from touching the wormhole, and at least his processor was relatively clear. He had - briefly - rested. Overlord had not yet started on the next torment that might distract him from the attempt. 

Megatron let his optics shut. He turned his attention inwards, to the places which his system always flagged as strange, abnormal,  _ wrong _ . He knew what the energies felt like. He knew how to go there - he had spent  _ so long _ finding the way to get there. He blocked out the sounds of Overlord moving around next to him, setting something up. He could not allow the outside world to distract him. Everything had to be focused inwards, on achieving his goal. 

The wormhole, when he brought it forth, would devour him as well as Overlord. It would consume everything on board the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ and the ship itself, every scrap of matter until nothing was left but the blank vacuum of space and the tiny dot of super-dense mass. He would die as well as his tormentors, but he was at peace with that. He had  _ been _ at peace with that ever since he had walked out to face Tarn in the field of blue flowers. 

Finally, things clicked into place. The power rushed into him, channeled through the twisting passages of his warped internals, welling and filling him up. 

Megatron opened his optics and felt plasma flaring like a dying star from their edges. His vision swam. Overlord looked up, and for the first time he seemed concerned by what he saw. 

“ _ What _ are you doing?” he demanded. Megatron paid him little mind. The energy was starting to burn out of him, leaking through the gaps between plating, biting into everything it touched. Some of it reached Overlord and he backed away as it started to dissolve his armour. His optics were wide and confused, still too proud to be truly worried. 

“Is this your way of fighting back properly?” he said, wary of getting too close to the tendrils of snapping power. “Why  _ now _ , Megatron? Why not at the start? Why wait?”

“I don’t expect you to understand my reasons,” Megatron told him. It was all he intended to say on the matter. Channelling the energy was hard enough. He had to keep it in check until it reached critical mass, otherwise it might not be enough. It might not kill the whole Pit-cursed vessel. 

Overlord lunged at him, but had to stop short. Wisps of radiation rose up from him as plating disintegrated. The reality of the situation was starting to dawn on him. Megatron could see it in his optics. He was starting to understand that this was not something that could be stopped or fought. Where the wormhole’s power had dug deep enough, even the ununtrium that plated his protoform was starting to be consumed. 

Megatron hung in his chains and let it happen. The black hole had established itself in the channel he had set for it. It was inexorable now. He had done enough. There was little to do now except wait for the end. 

“Megatron!”

Someone was calling his name. Not Overlord. Someone else. Someone familiar. 

Megatron managed to swing around just enough to see who it was. Like some vision of a malfunctioning processor, Rodimus stood there amongst the raging energies, servo outstretched. His faceplates held and expression of worry and fear. 

“I don’t know what’s happening here, but I’m here to rescue you!” Rodimus said. “Can you get free?”

The whole scene was too strange to be real. There was no way that Rodimus could be here. The wormhole must have started to eat into his processor. Never mind. It was a pleasant fantasy before he went offline. The idea of rescue. Of someone caring enough to come for him. 

“Megatron!”

The energy had eaten partway through his chains already. They were crumbling, barely holding his weight. It was simple work to jerk down hard enough to make them break. Megatron caught himself on his pedes awkwardly, wrists dropping down to waist height. 

“Just touch me, and Brainstorm will pull us back!” Rodimus said. 

It couldn’t hurt to indulge this fantasy. Megatron stumbled forwards and fell against Rodimus, his strength starting to give out. There was an odd sensation, as though he was being tightly compressed, and then… nothing. No feral, awesome power raging inside of him. No burning, biting against his plating. 

Voices filtered down gently. “Get him to medbay! Make sure Ratchet’s ready to do… whatever needs to be done!” There was the sense of movement. 

Megatron felt stasis take him. He surrendered to it easily. One way or another, it seemed that it was all over. 


End file.
